Twitter’s Streaming API…
Twitter has been a real-time product from its early stages, when it was primarily a tool for updating a website via SMS. What was lacking, however, were the tools for developers to really make use of Twitter’s real-time nature. Third-party Twitter applications could only make so many requests during a time period. If an app made too many requests, it would have to wait until that period was up before asking again. To avoid this, apps would poll Twitter periodically, which meant that there was inherently a lag between someone tweeting and it appearing on your screen.
This year, however, Twitter unleased its Streaming API (application programming interface), which gave developers the tools to bring tweets directly to users in real-time. While Twitter.com went through a complete redesign in September, it isn’t a fully real-time experience. As new Tweets come in, they queue up for the user to refresh the page. Worry not, because that brings us to our next item.
…Which Gave Birth to Streaming TweetDeck
TweetDeck was already a favorite of many a Twitter power user, including much (if not all) of the ReadWriteWeb staff. Its support of lists with multiple columns and its pop-up notifications make it the perfect tool for consistently monitoring Twitter. Then, this summer, TweetDeck took it one step further by implementing Twitter’s Streaming API, bringing its users the tweets as fast as they came in.
Suddenly, there is no lag time. You can tweet something and almost instantaneously get replies from other users. It becomes a real-time communication tool instead of simply a near-time communications tool. For some of us, hitting “refresh” and waiting for Twitter to update every so many seconds just isn’t acceptable, and TweetDeck makes sure we don’t have to.
Next: LBS Goes Mainstream & A Funny Little Thing Called PubSubHubbub
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