Twitter launches new developer tools, website

Microblogging giant Twitter announced the introduction of new Developer Site as well as a series of enhancements that should lead to richer functionality across the Twitter application and services ecosystem. In an email to programmers, Twitter director of platform Ryan Sarver writes that developers have now created more than 50,000 Twitter-based applications, with the firm planning to improve support for the ecosystem in the year ahead--first up is a 10x rate limit increase on the number of times an application can request information from Twitter for a single user from 150 requests per hour to 1500 per hour. "With the recent launches of Retweet, Lists and Geotagging we have seen applications struggle to provide the experience they want for their users within the 150 req/hr limit," Sarver notes. "We are excited to open the skies up a bit and provide some more room for developers to work within... Basic Whitelisting still exists and is unchanged. We look forward to what this means in terms of the increased richness around the user experience in Twitter apps."

Twitter's revamped Developer Site promises to consolidate existing communications channels and tools into a single destination while adding tools including new reference documentation, search, API console, API status dashboard (external monitoring service) and clearer documentation of policies. "We are investing heavily in this area and will continue to improve the tools and content for the ecosystem to make sure that you have everything you need to get started and for continued support," Sarver adds. Twitter also is planning a two-day developer conference dubbed Chirp, scheduled to take place in San Francisco sometime this year.

For more on Twitter's developer efforts:
- read this Twitter Development Talk message

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