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March 27, 2007

Web Services Coming To Twitter

Steve Poland

65 comments »

twitter.pngEarlier this year we talked about the usefulness of a simple command line to query multiple web services via a set syntax. Yubnub, one of the web services we discussed, does just that. Enter “Weather 90210″ into Yubnub and get the weather from Weather.com. Or query thousands of other services with that single command line.

A subtle upcoming change to Twitter’s API will allow this kind of functionality, too. Twitter, which is a kind of social network around sms/text messages, has a rapidly growing community of users that spend hours each day sending text messages about what they are doing or thinking. To post a message, a user simply texts the message they want to post to “40404.” Anyone who cares to follow the meanderings of another user can do so. All messages from people you follow can be seen on your Twitter page and, optionally, delivered to your mobile device via SMS.

A popular feature with Twitter is a “direct” message that you send to just a single friend. The syntax is simple - you type “d [username] [your message].”

Until now, Twitter’s API hasn’t allowed you to access those direct messages though. With today’s API addition, you can now retrieve Twitter direct messages. What does that mean? A lot, quite frankly.

Users can now send a command (”direct message”) to a username which is just a name for a web service like weather.com. For example, there could be a Twitter username “weather”, which I could send a Twitter message of “d weather 14202″ by text, web, or IM. The Twitter username “weather” could get this command (er, Twitter “direct message”) via the API, run a process on a web server to retrieve the current weather forecast for 14202, and send that as a direct message back to me ( i.e. “d TechCrunch Currently: Partly Cloudy, 50F. Tomorrow’s Forecast: AM Clouds/PM Sun. High: 55 Low: 40″).

Or there could be a username “score”, which you could send “d score Yankees”, to immediately request the score of the Yankees game. Or another example could be “d 411 Starbucks 14202″ to retrieve the phone number of the closest Starbucks to zip code 14202.

Currently, it costs a lot of money to launch a start-up in the SMS/mobile space — you have to license a shortcode monthly ($500-$1000/mo), pay a SMS gateway provider, and then pay anywhere from $0.03 - $0.05 per inbound or outbound text message. It adds up. But now, if a start-up chooses to use Twitter as a command line to their web service, it’s free (until Twitter starts charging for it).

As you can tell, the one thing that is kind of annoying is prefacing messages with “d”, but Twitter is internally discussing use of “@” as possibly becoming the equivalent of “d” — I hope they do this. Currently, people are using “@(username)” to publicly reply to other Twitter messages — which can be annoying if you’re a friend of a user that is replying to what another user said (and you don’t even know what was originally said).

The updated Twitter API code should be posting live by morning and accompanying API documentation should be posted by the end of today as well.

Editor’s Note: This post by Steve Poland of Ringside Startup, where he’s blogging his own web start-up journey with advice along the way from VCs and seasoned entrepreneurs. You can follow Steve’s life on twitter.com/techquilashots, and Michael Arrington’s at twitter.com/techcrunch.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 2:02 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Boris

    March 27th, 2007 at 2:32 am

    Any idea why you can’t just send an email to Twitter?

  2. Victor

    March 27th, 2007 at 2:35 am

    http://www.mail2twitter.com is a new service that allows you to send tweets through e-mail (blackberry/cellulars)

  3. Daniel Rust

    March 27th, 2007 at 3:04 am

    Wow that opens a lot of doors, especially if twitter’s growth continues

  4. RqTect

    March 27th, 2007 at 4:51 am

    Just my thought but, I don’t think twitter will make it.

  5. Twitteraddicted

    March 27th, 2007 at 5:54 am

    I think twitter will make it big time, what we see now is the visible part of the iceberg

  6. Jaan

    March 27th, 2007 at 5:55 am

    Having grown up in Sweden and the UK when the whole SMS thing took off, I am fairly certain that Twitter has a bright future. Unlike traditional SMS, it has a strong web component and that will eventually be the differentiator and what makes Twitter a huge hit.

    Think of Twitter as RSS for SMS - choose your own way to consume it/use it/tweak it. Phone, web, anything else… Twitter will be useful to people outside of tech fairly soon. Victor’s mail twitter post hints at this (I haven’t followed the link yet, though).

    One of the reasons I got involved with our project Nearbie http://www.nearbie.com is that I whole heartedly believe in creating services that pull together several different types of information (in our case history, photos, things to do, etc) to make sense of who I am in the here and now, as well as a keeping a record of what I’m up to. Twitter sort of does the former in words, and certainly the latter, especially with the improvements Arrington posted about.

  7. Todd

    March 27th, 2007 at 5:58 am

    Goodbye MySpace - Hello Twitter! There’s a billion dollars to be made for the first person to build a “one-click” back end service that port’s a persons myspace account info over to a new Twitter account.

  8. Josh

    March 27th, 2007 at 6:45 am

    I don’t think anyone realizes this, but if you use @username, it will only be seen by that user and people that follow that user. I.e. if I follow Dave Winer and he replies “@jasoncalacanis - msg here”, as a follow I only see that if I also follow jasoncalacanis. The only issue with that feature is you must say @username, and not some derivative of the username. Like in my case, you can’t say @josh, you must say @joshowens in order for the functionality to work. I spoke to Al3x about this and it was in a recent update. Very handy imo.

  9. Twitteraddicted

    March 27th, 2007 at 6:47 am

    I use twitter to communicate with my friends in a non intrusive way.

    They receive Sms from me and me from them, it is fun, plus we use the web to create or message, it is faster then typing on a cell phone.

    I still send them email or write them on IM, but with twitter I don’t have to tell them specific thing and at the same time I can give them useful information like : “check this cool website : http://www.twitter.com ;-) “.

    Plus there is an history of all the things I post on twitter, they can go back to the list of the post later.

    Finally we keep in touch together in a funny way and exchange the latest idea on something instantaneously via sms.

    The point here, if you don’t want to be disturb by Sms coming from people you don’t know, it’s really to be connected with the people you know. They know you will receive their message via Sms so they know what they are doing when they post something on twitter usually.

  10. Kewtr

    March 27th, 2007 at 7:03 am

    No offense, but a one-click account transfer utility would have to be one of the least sticky sites in history. Use it once and never come back. Still a good idea, just no billion dollars to be had in my opinion.

  11. Wordpress Guy

    March 27th, 2007 at 7:06 am

    Piggybacking on twitter for services of this type is a great idea, until Twitter make a small policy change and rip the rug from under you.
    People would have a LOT more confidence if Twitter came out with some statements promising not to do this, or even a statement that when they DO rip out the rug they’ll leave everyone already standing on the rug alone for 6 months, a year, whatever.

  12. Direct Textbooks

    March 27th, 2007 at 7:09 am

    Just curious, but where does Twitter make money? Not that that necessarily precludes them from the success of being purchased, but just wondering if there’s actually money there. Those SMS numbers and servers aren’t free.

  13. Tom

    March 27th, 2007 at 7:15 am

    Why do you need Twitter at all? If you want to use your cell phone to find out what your friend is doing, just CALL them, no?

  14. Colin Dowling

    March 27th, 2007 at 7:18 am

    I am not sure Twitter is a service I would ever use, but I certainly admire the way they seem to have been able to leverage good connections in to wide (or at least widER) adoption by users.

  15. xxdesmus

    March 27th, 2007 at 7:56 am

    I think Twitter will be just fine. The new API will definitely help make it more popular and more useful as well.

    Personally, I use Twitter to write anything I don’t want to be bothered to open up my blog for …so for me it really is a micro-publishing platform. It all depends on how the individual person uses Twitter. That is the beauty (and flexibility) of Twitter: I can use it for something, and you can use it for something totally different.

  16. rack pallet

    March 27th, 2007 at 8:07 am

    Twitter will make it; but never mega, YT, Goog, MSN, MS, Yahoo, status ..

    - More of FLickr,Joost, etc … probably acquired within 12 months

    -RB

  17. Andy

    March 27th, 2007 at 8:08 am

    Pricing from an SMS gateway on a shared number with a keyword prefix is perhaps lower than your suggested prices. And if your service has in turn a good business model, you can justify the costs per message.

  18. Direct Textbooks

    March 27th, 2007 at 8:20 am

    We’ve gone through the whole SMS gateway process, it was pretty expensive compared to what we’d get out of it– this is definitely something we’d look into for easy price lookups via SMS.

  19. Amy Wilsch

    March 27th, 2007 at 8:22 am

    I must be getting old. Not only do I not want to tell people where I am / what I’m doing all the time, I actively avoid it to keep some sanity in a always-plugged world. :) Pretty soon everyone’s daily routines will be followable.

    I am still always brought back to that scene in Minority Report where he walks into the store and it scans his retinas & says “hello %name% would you like a new %white shirt% to go with the %khakis% you bought %last week%.”

  20. Rajeev Vashisht

    March 27th, 2007 at 8:32 am

    Well people have a need to always be connected. Modern cosmpopolitan life is creating a disconnect in the life of Urbanites. Any way to stay connected with loved, dear and near ones, or any one who cares is welcome.

    http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

  21. Sam the Hired Man

    March 27th, 2007 at 8:37 am

    Ever since I began reading Dave Winer’s orgasmic raves about Twitter, I’ve tried to figure out the fascination with it, and have come up empty. Most of the comments on the home page are inane. The only benefit I really see out of the service is that it seems like a good way to filter out really stupid people (with a few exceptions). And, I’m with Amy above, I really don’t want or need people to know what I’m doing 24/7. Maybe that’s because I’m spending so much praying about the direction of a society so fascinated with self-glam.

  22. Chris24

    March 27th, 2007 at 9:09 am

    Hey,

    One Cool Service with multiple Twitter Benifits, uses the Twitter API:

    Tweetl

    Tweetl.com

    Enjoy!

    -Chris24

  23. Ola

    March 27th, 2007 at 9:10 am

    Twitter - For those important moments inbetween blogs

    Seriously though, isn’t the internet not already jampacked with mind numbing content? I’ve checked out Twitter and i just don’t get it. Is the blog too slow now? Is the risk of actually reflecting over what you write, for the entire world to read, so overwhelming that those extra seconds that a blogpost actually takes has to be eliminated?

  24. Ron Diggity

    March 27th, 2007 at 9:38 am

    Twitter is really annoying. I tried the service out, and even just subscribing to two friends it got pretty intrusive. I don’t see how regular text messaging and calling or emailing someone doesn’t work anymore??? Twitter is just doing what your phone can already do. Making money off you sending text messages. I mean you could already send your friends messages about what you are doing every moment, but you haven’t cause they don’t really care. Somehow twitter has convinced people that you need to send multiple messages to keep people informed about your life??? I dunno..i don’t buy into the hype. If it weren’t for Odeo, Obvious, and the other financial backing this company has, it would be pure shit.

  25. Vikram

    March 27th, 2007 at 9:53 am

    i used to use a few months ago.. its good :)

  26. Steve Poland

    March 27th, 2007 at 10:00 am

    Twitter username squatting — http://www.techquilashots.com/.....s-in-1995/

  27. engtech

    March 27th, 2007 at 10:00 am

    I hope people don’t start basing their startup around Twitter support the way other companies have done with MySpace.

  28. John

    March 27th, 2007 at 10:20 am

    Another SF Text Messaging startup, TextMarks.com, already has the ability to push requests to a URL and without the need to add “@” or “d” before a keyword (equivalent to a Twitter username).

    Also reminds me of the functionality that Mozes.com offers, however neither seems to have widely caught on like Twitter has.

  29. Manoj

    March 27th, 2007 at 10:52 am

    For all those cricket lovers, who wanna follow world cup, there is already one at http://twitter.com/crictimes

    (Its also featured on http://www.twitter.com homepage as on this moment)

  30. Yuri

    March 27th, 2007 at 11:05 am

    What you are seeing here folks is the evolution of IM (SMS, CLI, etc, etc…) is a major UI. I blogg about it (shamless! I’m sorry) here, here and now here. I think we’ll be IMing and SMSing our way through to a ton of web services in the near future. Ok, Ok… maybe this is premature… but there’s a part of me that smells “success” with this. Twitter will be HUGE as the enabler of the IM as the UI for web services.

  31. Nik Cubrilovic

    March 27th, 2007 at 11:19 am

    John: The reason why is because the users of Twitter signed up to use it as a social platform, not as a straight-up text messaging info service. When I look at Twitter, I signup to keep in touch with my friends and meet new people - the SMS and other services are secondary. It’s primary use also makes Twitter very viral.

    When I look at the other services, I have no motivation to signup because I can’t see immediate value. They also have the hard tasks of trying to be a platform from day 1

    Twitter will now gradually become a platform, and because it is established as a consumer service, it will beat these other guys

  32. Direct Textbooks

    March 27th, 2007 at 11:45 am

    I think the Twitter username landrush is truly on as of today. There will be a ton of potential services for this. Thumbs up.

  33. Kevin Berry

    March 27th, 2007 at 12:24 pm

    I think twitter is useless in terms of social networking, however this API concept has real potential to help deliver real world, real time data via SMS. Think about how popular twitter could be if someone could figure out how to deliver real world stock prices. Imagine if all you had to do was message twitter with a market and stock symbol to get an up to date stock price. (Ex: text “Nasdaq goog” to twitter to get Google’s stock price.)

    For twitter to take off mainstream with social networking, it would require millions of people to constantly feed the site with updated content info on what they are doing. I think it’s unrealistic to expect that to happen. Even on Facebook most people don’t update their status very often. Instead, twitter ought to be focusing on delivering the vast amounts of real time data that is already produced and in the public domain. They could make vast amounts of data available to anyone with a cell phone.

    The only question for me is whether or not Twitter will be able to expand with increased demand, or whether they will be burdened with scalability issues.

  34. Christian DeVera

    March 27th, 2007 at 1:51 pm

    The people who don’t get Twitter need to think outside the box. I use Twitter to connect with people outside the good ‘ole USA. It’s too expensive to call and text in most cases. I think in order to “blow up”, Twitter needs to provide free gateways in other countries such as the Philippines.

  35. sf

    March 27th, 2007 at 1:58 pm

    Why is Twitter so terribly slow? Reminds me of dial-up..

  36. Dillon Thomas

    March 27th, 2007 at 2:07 pm

    I’m interested in the growth in Twitter as it’s built on Ruby on Rails. A framework I’d like to use one day.

    A lot of people are saying Twitter will go mainstream and I hope it does but the biggest RoR site I know of is Basecamp, about 1 million users.

    How mainstream could Twitter get on the RoR framework?

  37. Greg Harris

    March 27th, 2007 at 2:49 pm

    If you’re looking to simply have an API on a short code, we’ve had it for months.

    Want stock prices?, Text “QUOTE IBM to 95495″

    Want weather, Text “WEATHER 90210″ to 95495

    The Mobivity API already does this quickly and easily. We also have an API that reads an RSS feed and returns the title as a text message.

    Twitter is an interesting concept that must be costing them a fortune in message fees every day. I’m not sure how they will generate revenue. They should stick to being a social platform, and not an information source. I give them credit for creating a very simple service that people love. But they must me losing a ton of money!

    Check out our api at http://www.mobilemarketing.net/api.aspx if you want to deliver content via SMS over a real short code.

  38. Jeff Hume

    March 27th, 2007 at 2:51 pm

    Regarding Twitter internationally and “free gateways”. Are sending text messages to long distances numbers long distance calls? Do you get charged extra for them even if you have a plan that gives you so many free m essages?

  39. Gibson Starkweather

    March 27th, 2007 at 3:25 pm

    Maybe I completely missed the point, but Google has been offering this “SMS search” feature for quite some time. If you text something like “weather seattle” or “teriyaki new york city” you will get appropriate information sent back in the form of text messages.
    The number is 466453 (GOOGLE).
    Did I completely miss the point?

  40. Gibson Starkweather

    March 27th, 2007 at 3:26 pm

    Forgot something that could be quite useful:
    http://sms.google.com

    Cheers.

  41. sf

    March 27th, 2007 at 4:30 pm

    Does Google give API access for Google SMS? What if I want to have a SMS service for my business where someone could text the number with an order for a cup of coffee for example? If Google doesn’t allow that, Twitter is obviously stepping in the right direction.

  42. Erik

    March 27th, 2007 at 4:53 pm

    Greg hit the real issue.

    Terminating SMS is not free. At ~$0.02 twiiter needs a $20 CPM to break even.

    How does twitter’s traffic break down between SMS, IM, Widget and web site?

  43. Erik

    March 27th, 2007 at 4:55 pm

    “At ~$0.02/message” is what I meant to write.

  44. Dpj222

    March 27th, 2007 at 5:14 pm

    Twitter to keep in touch with friends from around the world? There are much easier, less invasive ways to do so. VelvetPuffin http://velvetpuffin.com/main/main.html You can be online on your phone or computer and speak to anyone in the world through the VP chat feature. Not only that, but you can access and share your personal blog, YouTube, and Flickr from your mobile phone or desktop which makes social networking and staying connected easy. They have a cool polling feature too.

  45. Klaus

    March 27th, 2007 at 6:28 pm

    Twitter is burning a lot of money if you ask me.

    Terminating a SMS in Europe is even more expensive than the 2 Cents and here users don’t have to pay for receiving SMS.

    If this really takes off they will run out of money very fast.

  46. Greg Harris

    March 28th, 2007 at 7:15 am

    Since it is a group service, think about the enormous amount of messages being sent. Every single message sent (most at least) go to more than one person. It is runored that they are spending in excess of $100,000 per month right now in message costs alone.

  47. Mark

    March 28th, 2007 at 8:38 am

    Has anyone seen the API yet?

  48. Jeff Hume

    March 28th, 2007 at 9:41 am

    They’re going to have to start making some money fast.

  49. kellan

    March 29th, 2007 at 2:02 pm

    There has been an API to access direct messages since last November. Its the API that we built out the Twitter weather bots, and the Twitterpated scripts on. Both are on Google Code. It’s called Jabber.

  50. Mike

    March 30th, 2007 at 6:05 pm

    Twitter FTW! I use it all the time, and it’s a great way to keep track of friends!

    http://www.twitter.com/pcrobot

  51. hillary

    April 4th, 2007 at 5:10 pm

    i have to disagree with your hope that they mere the @ and D functions. one of the things i love about twitter (when i’m procrastinating) is tracking certain conversations with the “in reply to” links. there’s often info that i want to direct to someone but would also like others to see. getting rid of this feature and only allowing direct messages would be a mistake IMHO.

    http://urltea.com/3oc?@-charac.....everything

  52. JJ

    April 5th, 2007 at 3:50 am

    If you are looking for a Treo / Palm OS application to post to Twitter, you can take a look to the freeware TreoTwit:

    http://www.mitreo.com/treotwit_twitter_palm_os/
    http://www.pdaexpertos.com/for.....hp?t=55687

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