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Twitter Launches New Developer API

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Twitter recently released the new Twitter API (early access) to be used by third-party developers. The new Twitter API features three new product tracks targeting different segments: standard, academic research, and business. The new API offers conversation threading, poll results in Tweets, pinned Tweets on profiles, spam filtering, real-time tweet tracking, and a more powerful stream filtering and search query language.

Twitter explained the goals for the new Twitter API as follows:

We’ve always known that our developer ecosystem is diverse, but our API has long taken a one-size-fits-all approach. You helped us to understand the use cases you have when you work with the Twitter API and we’re building the new API to help you accomplish these goals—releasing new functionality in phases, each supporting the core goals that we’ve heard from you.

Twitter mentioned that a key goal for developers when using the Twitter API was to listen to and analyze the conversation happening on Twitter. In the first phase, Twitter thus released a set of endpoints that enables third-party developers to stream tweets in real-time, analyze past conversations, measure tweet performance, listen for important events, and explore tweets from a specific account.

Twitter also sought to improve the developer experience by releasing a redesigned developer portal, updated docs, and a new support section. Third-party developers should now enjoy easier onboarding, contextual documentation links, and a centralized support page.

Twitter sought to gather developers in three segments characterized by the access and features they may enjoy: standard, academic research, and business.

Twitter API developer segments
Source: release note

The free basic access level was recently launched with rate limits. The elevated access level is pending launch, and will not have the same restrictions, but may not be free (pricing was unknown at the date of publication of this article). Twitter estimated that 80 percent of developers on its platform should have their needs covered with the basic level.

The new API (v2) endpoints will replace the v1.1 standard, premium, and enterprise endpoints. Twitter made the API roadmap public.

Some developers have expressed their interest on Twitter. One developer said:

I like the contextualized docs and the demo tool!

Another developer however asked for clarification on the new rate limits (500,000 Tweets/month activity cap on the recent search and filtered stream endpoints).

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