Rounding off the first-ever Twitter developer conference, Chirp, was a lightning-fast roundup of a few apps the Twitter team found fascinating enough to showcase for the 1000-hacker crowd. Each team got exactly 140 seconds to present their wares, and all showcasing apps were judged by an all-star lineup that included moderator and Twitter product VP Jason Goldman, Marissa Mayer of Google, Y-Combinator founder Paul Graham and Blippy co-founder Philip Kaplan.
Each app gives some insight into how Twitter thinks developers should approach the platform — and how leaders in tech see the future of Twitter apps. Based on the apps that were selected, here are six app models that stand a good chance of being viable in the immediate future.
Filtration
Yesterday, we told you about Tweet Agora, an iPhone app that focuses on filtering streams and the ability to “mute” certain users. Team member Brett MacLean said his team was less nervous than others about Twitter’s acquisition of Tweetie
as the official Twitter iPhone app because Tweet Agora had focused on filtering Twitter streams.
“I don’t know how viable an iPhone Twitter client is,” said Graham, which elicited a groan from the audience of developers. But in spite of this fact, he noted that he liked the mute feature. Mayer said she wanted to see more nuance in filtration, for example getting rid of certain types of tweets, not just specific users. As Twitter continues to be a constant battle between signal and noise, filtration will remain a critical problem for developers to solve.
But caveat hacker: While good solutions make for great acquisition targets, à la Summize or Tweetie, they can also make for subtle IP borrowing, à la Twitter’s list feature, which is based on “emergent” models fromTweetDeck, Sawhorse Media and other third-party apps and sites.
Curation
Twittelator Pad is a leading, full-featured iPad app with multimedia channels, a.k.a. “frictionless lists” that allow users to follow topics. For example, if you’re into beer, the app has curated a group of Twitter users who are on the most lists related to beer. They’ll serve up all kinds of content from those users as a single channel, as if you had an on-demand beer channel on a handheld, mobile TV.
Content curation is a hot topic right now across the social media board. There is a glut of free, user-generated content, and many consumer apps are focusing on culling that content in interesting and valuable ways. Goldman says that channels are a great approach; Twitter is always looking for better ways to enhance discovery for new users — the revamped suggested users list is a prime example.
Segregation
One of the best pitches I personally heard at Chirp was CrowdReel
. This beautiful app makes a streaming mosaic of every image uploaded to Twitter from any souce — TwitPic, TwitGoo, you name it. Users can choose to view the whole firehose, current trends, search results or a feed of images just from their own friends.
Mayer thought the app was great; she was impressed with the concept and the user interface. “They’re focused on organizing your stream; that’s pretty cool.” Goldman was enthusiastic, as well. “I really liked CrowdReel as a consumer experience,” he said. “I love slicing up the stream by pictures, links.” Graham said devs could also consider slicing up the stream in different ways — for example, showing only links or only news. “I can see CrowdReel being a go-to source,” he concluded.
It’s hard to predict whether stream-slicing will ever become an official Twitter feature, but one word of advice we heard across the board, both from outside investors and from Twitter reps, is to think vertically. If you can find a way to split up the type of content in a way that appeals to a niche market, you might stand a better chance of building a viable consumer app on the platform.
Conversation
Those who’ve been hacking the Twitter API for a while will remember the infamous Ticket #142. Dating back to November 2008, this ticket deals with a hole in the conversation API; simply put, a developer requested, “Please add the ability to search for replies to a given tweet.” As of today, that ticket has been closed. Said the hackers involved in Project 142, “You give us a status ID, we give you every reply to that status ID.” This includes conversations that occur chronologically both before and after the given tweet. They wanted Twitter to be more conversational, “not just the brain dump it sometimes is.”
Kaplan said, “We should have a hack day just based on this.” Graham questioned whether developers would be able to build services on this; the Project 142 devs said they’re working with legal to keep the API open. They also hope to build a chat-like interface, as well. Goldman said, “This is huge, developers are going to love this.” But again, this seems like a feature Twitter might want to make official at some point in the future; see previous caveat.
Discovery
The team from SonicLiving hacked away overnight on a brilliant bit of code that allows users to find and follow musicians on Twitter. It scrapes artists from users’ Pandora, Last.fm, Blip, Lala and iTunes accounts for their favorite artists, then tracks down those folks on Twitter and presents them for the user’s following pleasure. Essentially, it creates custom lists based on the kind of music a user likes to listen to.
Goldman said that this is “one of the problems we talked about a lot: user discovery. This is great. Have you considered using the streaming API to make a timeline of these tweets?” Mayer said the app was “very clever.” Graham blurted out, “How come no one’s done this before?” and Kaplan simply stated, “It’s f***ing brilliant. The API is going to be amazing.”
But for all this praise, this app didn’t come up in the post-showcase discussion, when judges were more preoccupied with monetization, UX and stream organization.
Measurement
Tap11’s name is inspired by a certain mockumentary, but the concept is serious business: a brand-focused Twitter client that includes both broadcast and analysis tools for Twitter and beyond (social media marketing managers: get in on the free/beta/trial period while you can). This app even keeps a scorecard for each user on a multiuser account — a unique feature that Graham particularly liked. “You could create a whole career from a scorecard,” he noted.
Overall, Graham and Kaplan were both optimistic about the monetization potential of a B2B analysis tool. “The number one question advertisers have is, ‘What’s the value of a follower?’” said Kaplan. “The first analytics company that can figure out conversions will win.” “The Twitter ecosystem is going to be a lot more nuanced,” added Mayer. “Winning tools will tease apart how different followers and tweets are different. Not all users will be equal.”
But as Twitter gets ready to ramp up promoted tweets, be aware that the company is fully cognizant of the money-making potential of ad platforms and measurement tools. “We want to do more analytics for companies,” said Goldman. “We’re building an API for that, too: mutli-author accounts, analytics around how those perform.” But in this particular market, there’s always opportunity to capture a few brands by doing ROI analysis better or simply doing it the way they want it done.
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