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Tag: twitter apps

  • Twitter’s Flock Developer Series & Hatch Contest: What You Need To Know

    Twitter is wooing developers more than ever in 2015. It’s hard to believe, but the company only recently held its first-ever developer conference, Flight. The October event saw the unveiling of Twitter’s Fabric developer kits and Digits sign-in.

    There are three modular kits that address stability, distribution, revenue, and identity. Fabric combines services from Twitter itself, as well as its Crashlytics and MoPub offerings and other things. The Crashlytics kit is for stability, The Twitter kit is for distribution, and the MoPub kit is for integrating ads into apps. Digits is a phone number-based sign-in, and is part of the Twitter kit. More on all of that here.

    Now, this year, Twitter is going on the road with a new developer event series called Flock.

    The Flock Takes Flight

    “Since we unveiled Fabric at our first mobile developer conference, many of you have started using the Kits to address some of the most common challenges facing app developers: stability, distribution, revenue and identity,” says Jeff Sandquist, Head of Developer and Platform Relations at Twitter. “We hope to meet many more of you over the coming months, so we’re hitting the road on a worldwide tour we’re calling Flock. We believe the next great app can come from anywhere so we are going everywhere we can to help you learn how to use Fabric to build great apps.”

    Flock is to consist of two phases. The first one is a road trip across the U.S., which will see Twitter’s team of developer advocates traveling in a Fabric bus from city to city to host meetups and seminars.

    The second phase will see the team of Fabric engineers and developer advocates traveling around the world to host a series of half-day events. Here are all of the dates:

    Los Angeles, CA: Jan. 21-25
    Las Vegas, NV: Jan. 26-27
    Denver/Boulder, CO: Jan. 28-31
    Kansas City, MO: Feb. 1-4
    St. Louis, MO: Feb. 5
    Nashville, TN: Feb. 6-9
    Chicago, IL: Feb. 10-11
    Detroit, MI: Feb. 12-13
    London: February 19
    Berlin: February 26
    New York City: March 11
    Tokyo: Spring 2015
    Seoul: Spring 2015
    Hong Kong: Spring 2015
    Shanghai: Spring 2015
    Bangalore: Spring 2015
    São Paulo: Spring 2015
    Southern Hemisphere Autumn 2015

    Fabric Gets Some Updates

    Since Fabric launched at the October Flight conference, Twitter has made several updates to the kits. For one, they upgraded the beta distribution tool with share links and crash-to-tester identification. This was announced in December. Share links enable you to create onboarding links for each build and invite testers through various media.

    “Within your share link dashboard, you can manage all your links in one place — with complete control over who can access your builds,” explained Jason St. Pierre on the Crashlytics blog. “Share a public link with the press or your investors, or create a private link for internal dogfooding by setting domain restrictions. We also automatically point your internal links to the latest build so your testers can always access the latest from one reliable place.”

    “No need to worry about manually adding new testers either!” he added. “With share links, you can automatically assign new testers to a group when they sign up via your link. This ensures that everyone will receive your updates in the future, as soon as you send them out. On top of that, you can now create specific groups ahead of time based on where you plan to post your links. Organizing testers have never been easier.”

    The crash-to-tester functionality lets you instantly identify the tester who experienced a specific crash from within your crash reports. You can then immediately contact testers for feedback and work with them to reproduce the issue at hand.

    Twitter also added a new self-service app installs tracking feature called Answers. This is available for free as part of Fabric. It provides real-time, optimized app analytics.

    “Answers gave us the analytics to track thousands of installs for free from our mobile app promotion campaigns and helped us meet our cost-per-acquisition goals,” said Greg Schwartz co-founder & CEO of calendar app UpTo.

    “We love having the free mobile measurement solution from Fabric to track both app installs driven by our users sharing content on Twitter, as well as app installs we drove through Twitter Ads,” said Path marketing manager Ana Larue. “This solution gave us the visibility to track the 100,000+ installs we drove via Twitter in November.”

    Organic installs measured by Answers are available in Card Analytics.

    Last month, Twitter also launched theming support for Digits. This lets you make Digits blend into your iOS and Android apps.

    “We understand how crucial your app’s sign-in experience is to growing and retaining your user base,” said Digits engineer Israel Camacho. “Digits can already be launched from any button anywhere within your app to optimize that experience. Now, with theming support, you can match Digits exactly to your app’s ambience so the Digits sign-in flow looks indistinguishable from your app. The look and feel of your background, call-to-action button and select text are all customizable.”

    Finally, in the MoPub Kit, Twitter shipped support for MRAID 2.0 and specification to enable rich media ads in banners and interstitial ad units.

    Expect to learn how to get more out of all of this stuff at the Flock events.

    The Hatch Contest

    Along with the Flock developer event series, Twitter just announced a new contest for startups called Hatch. With this, the company is calling on developers to tell them about their apps, and they’ll pick a winner, who will get meetings with Twitter execs as well as opportunities to meet with potential investors. They’ll also get some funding cash. There will be ten finalists, who will fly to San Francisco to present their startup ideas at the first annual Hatch Gala in July. Here’s a look at the prizes and what it takes to be eligible:

    Submissions for Hatch are open now. The deadline is June 5, which will be followed by the first round of judging beginning on June 8, and the second round on June 15. The finalists will be announced on June 22, and the finalist event in San Francisco will take place on a date in July to be announced.

    Image via Twitter

  • Netflix Launches Breaking Bad ‘Spoiler Foiler’

    While die hard fans won’t have to worry about it for too much longer, Netflix has created a “Spoiler Foiler” designed to keep Breaking Bad spoilers out of fans’ Twitter feeds. It’s a Twitter app designed to keep you from seeing Breaking Bad-related tweets you don’t want to see.

    “Behind on Breaking Bad? Now you can check your feed without fear,” the app site explains. “Any tweets with danger words get blacked out..When you’ve caught up, it’s safe to go back to normal Twitter. Until Heisenberg comes knocking again on Monday.”

    It appears to block out text from any tweet even containing the word “bad”.

    While there is only one episode left to air, a lot of people will still be making their way through the series for the first time using Netflix (or other means). Of course viewers in the UK relying on Netflix to get the episodes the day after they air here in the U.S. have to worry about us here int he states ruining it for them.

    Image: AMC (YouTube)

  • Twitter Apps Go OAuth Today

    As of today, Twitter apps will all use OAuth for user authentication. Users will be able to use apps without them storing their password.

    "The move to OAuth will mean increased security and a better experience. Applications won’t store your username and password, and if you change your password, applications will continue to work," says Twitter’s Carolyn Penner says, "With OAuth, you still individually approve each application before using it, and you can revoke access at any time."

    "In order for Twitter applications to access your account, developers have been able to choose one of two authentication methods: Basic Authentication or OAuth," says Penner. "Both require your permission, but there is an important difference. With Basic Auth, you provide your usOAuthername and password for the app to access Twitter, and the application has to store and send this information over the Internet each time you use the app. With OAuth, this isn’t the case. Instead, you approve an application to access Twitter, and the application doesn’t store your password."

    A lot of Twitter users are already using apps that use OAuth. Echofon, TweetDeck, Twitterrific, Seesmic, and Twitter for Android, iPhone, and Blackberry already use it.

    Twitter users can go to the "Connections" section under settings and see what all apps they’ve authorized and to revoke access if necessary. If you’re not using the latest versions of any apps, they may stop working because of the change.

  • 100,000 Ways to Make Twitter More Useful

    Update: Twitter announced today at its Chirp Developer Conference that it has 100,000 registered apps.

    Original Article:     Since its inception, one of the biggest knocks against Twitter has been that it’s been hard to figure out what to use it for. As time has gone by, this has become much more clear to a great many people, but you can rest assured, there are still plenty out there who have a hard time justifying its use. Others, particularly in the business world feel like they need to be using it, but still have a hard time finding ways in which it can be most effective and beneficial to their specific needs.

    What Twitter apps make Twitter more useful to you?     Tell us here.

    Twitter’s usefulness more often than not, becomes much more apparent when you find that app that frames it in a way that makes sense to your life or your business (or both).

    There are at least 10,000 Ways to Use Twitter.

    OneForty is a directory of Twitter apps, that’s been around since last year, when we first discussed it with founder Laura Fitton. Last month at SXSW in Austin, we dropped by Fitton’s party (which featured some fantastic beer, I must say) and talked with her about the site, and the vast array of Twitter tools that are constantly being developed.

    At the time, Fitton said OneForty was up to about 2,500 Twitter apps, and that they’ve found "evidence" of 7,500 apps more. So that’s about 10,000 apps out there providing ways to use Twitter, if this is accurate. There’s got to be some useful ones (might I suggest our own Twellow – the Yellow Pages for Twitter). Currently, the site claims, "2,624 Twitter tools that make Twitter more useful for your business, career or life."

    The directory has 23 main app categories from Advertising, Analytics, Blogging Tools, Business, Email, and Search, to Mobile, Shopping, Productivity, News, Networking, and Monitoring (there are plenty of other more fun ones as well, like Games, Music, and Multimedia).

    Any business evaluating their social media strategy, and Twitter strategy in particular, would probably do well to take some time and do some Twitter app exploration. It’s entirely possible that there are apps out there that will have a profound impact on how your business interacts with Twitter, and could potentially have a significant impact on your online strategy as a whole. OneForty is not the only Twitter directory out there, but it’s certainly a good place to start exploring.

    What Twitter apps do you use for your business? Share your favorites here.