14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter is moving forward with plans to reveal a new Streaming API. The API has been announced at the Twitter Chirp conference and the company has been testing it ever since. Now it has started testing it in the wild, partnering with the developers of TweetDeck and Echofon. The Streaming API enables apps to get a constant and real-time feed of tweets and other Twitter activity without having to constantly poll the service.
“User Streams is now in a limited testing period for desktop clients. We are working closely with developers to preview their implementations to a restricted set of testers. We are gathering feedback and usage statistics to prepare for an open beta period, tentatively scheduled for late Q3 or Q4 of 2010,” Taylor Singletary, developer advocate at Twitter, announced on a dedicated Google group.
“The current phase of the limited testing period includes the TweetDeck and Echofon desktop applications. During this initial period, beta/preview versions will not be made available to all users of these apps. More desktop applications will follow with their own testing period shortly,” the announcement added.
The Streaming API turns the way the Twitter APIs currently work on its head. Now, desktop and mobile apps, have to poll the Twitter platform to get updates, be them tweets, followers, private messages and so on. Each app can only do this a set number of times per hour to ensure that Twitter doesn’t get flooded with requests.
During the world cup, due to the high demand put on the Twitter servers, the team had to lower the request rate. This meant that Twitter could still function, but it also meant that there would be delays for app users. With the Streaming API, all the updates apps need to present to the user are broadcasted by Twitter. At first glance, having to constantly push updates make seem like more strain for the Twitter servers, but this actually decreases the amount of activity they see since every event is broadcasted to all of the apps that require it at the same time.