But over the last few years, social media sites and their application programming interfaces (API) have spawned what we like to call "developer ecosystems." These are communities centered around building applications on top of more popular services, such as Twitter or Facebook. Social media APIs have been responsible for adding a new layer of functionality to popular services and have spawned a new era of innovation.
Which developer ecosystem should you program and hack for, though? In order to help you answer that question, we've written up a brief overview of four different ecosystems, from Facebook to Google Wave. This knowledge will hopefully help you better understand your options.
1. Facebook
In a few short years, the Twitter development ecosystem has exploded from a small niche to a mainstream phenomenon. Part of it is due to the nature of Twitter: it lacks many features in its pursuit for simplicity. This has created an opening for thousands of developers to fill the holes.
Now there are Twitter apps that do everything from let you manage your Twitter account on-the-go to analyze tweets for real world trends.
First, here are some stats on the Twitter development ecosystem:
- Active since: Near the launch of Twitter itself
- Number of applications: "Tens of thousands of apps," according to Twitter
- Interesting stat: Nearly 80% of Twitter usage is through third party Twitter Apps (data via TwitStat)
Reasons to develop Twitter apps: Unlike Facebook, Twitter doesn't have 300+ million users. Instead, it has momentum, excitement, and virility, which Jesse Stay believes is the best reason to develop an app for Twitter. It's a "great opportunity" to build and promote an app in a very short amount of time, and because of that momentum, a Twitter app can go from zero to millions of users in a matter of days or weeks.
Tip for developing Twitter apps: Prepare for Twitter to go down at any time. Twitter has had stability issues for a while now, so making sure that your app isn't a broken heap of code when there's an issue with the API is key.
The most difficult issue developing for Twitter: Twitter is fast-growing, which means that it's fast-changing. New features, such as Project Retweet and Twitter Lists, are being launched all the time, requiring you to adapt.
4. Google Wave
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