Members of Tumblr and Wordpress blogging communities can now access blogs via the Twitter API. The companies cloned the Twitter API to allow users to read and write blog posts via popular Twitter client applications. (Wordpress announcement, Tumblr announcement, disclosure: this blog runs on Tumblr.)
That certainly says something about the ubiquity of the Twitter API and the popularity of Twitter clients. I suspect it also makes access to Wordpress and Tumblr more mobile-friendly and makes both platforms more approachable to people who would prefer smaller bites of content.
To engage in a bit of speculation, I would not be surprised to see more instances ofTwitter API cloning soon. The obvious candidates would be other blogging communities like LiveJournal or Vox. (Personally, I think the experience of accessing Google Reader via a Twitter client would be unique and potentially useful.)
Also, I expect to see a ton of Twitter clients adding support for alternate API hosts. This is required to make Twitter API requests from content providers other than Twitter; only some clients support it today.
On the other side, I wonder what other APIs besides Twitter’s are worthy of cloning.
Fred Wilson, Urban Architects [via Steven Johnson]
Twitter has had some downtime lately. It has also (relatedly) grown quite popular. This lead not one, not two, but at least three separate people (Louis Gray, Brian Alvey, and John Gruber) to suggest, independently and humorously, that Twitter would make a ton of money selling advertising on their “Something is technically wrong” page.
[Bonus: Twittering About Architecture gives some background and explains Twitter’s “gradual transition” for dealing with stability problems.]
In responce to criticism from a user with claims of harassment, Twitter’s Biz Stone says, “Twitter is a communication utility, not a mediator of content.”
This leads me to wonder if the Twitter folks (or their lawyers) are thinking about their service as a Common Carrier. A common carrier would not be able to pick and choose which messages are sent through it. (WP: “[a common carrier] cannot discriminate, that is refuse the service unless there is some compelling reason….”)
Hence, if Twitter wants to position itself as a common carrier, it would not want to disable the account in question.
