We’ll Be at Chirp

Not long ago, Twitter announced its inaugural developer conference, whimsically called Chirp, would be held April 14 and 15, 2010 in San Francisco.

It may or may not be coincidental that the dates are one week earlier than Facebook’s annual f8 developer conference.

Anyway, Chirp looks to be an outstanding opportunity to learn more about Twitter, the Twitter API and the developers using it.

The agenda is equally interesting. April 14 is an expected day of conference sessions about the API, its features, OAuth, strategies, roadmap, all the usual content.

April 15 is a 24-hack day, starting at 6 PM and ending until the following day at 6 PM. It’s not that unusual for developer-focused conferences to provide a space for around-the-clock hacking, after all, coding in groups can often produces the best code.

This is the first time I’ve seen an entire day of a conference devoted solely to hacking, but then again, I’m not a developer.

I do play one on TV though.

I hear you asking why we’re going to a Twitter developer conference at all, which is a fair question.

Reason 1: The Twitter API is the gold standard among application APIs. We could debate that, but it’s true. Twitter’s API handles a significant amount of their overall traffic, which was recently reported to be 50 million tweets each day.

From what I’ve read, it’s difficult to measure client traffic, but I’ve seen estimates that put API usage at about half, meaning half of Twitter’s users are tweeting via a client.

Since most so-called power users use clients (vs. twitter.com), it’s conceivable that the API could handle more traffic than twitter.com does.

Plus, the Twitter API has created an ecosystem of apps around Twitter, which in turn has launched other ecosystems, like oneforty.

So what?

Well, WebCenter 11g Patchset 1 has REST APIs for several of its services. We’re using some of them internally, and anything we can learn from Twitter about API scalability, design and implementation will only help us.

Reason 2: As the social web advances, companies are flocking to Twitter and Facebook (and LinkedIn to a lesser extent) to interact and build their brands, or if they’re not already thinking about this, the analysts they trust are.

This means demand for integration with these sites will make them list items on RFPs that sales will have to answer. Because I expect this will happen in the very near future, Chirp offers a timely way to get a bootcamp on the Twitter API.

Plus, it won’t be enough to build a client. Any integration, especially from within a corporate firewall, will need to use OAuth to be taken seriously, and OAuth just so happens to be a topic for Chirp, natch.

Reason 3: People. A 24-hack day with Rich and Anthony should be a fun (and intense) experience, as we go from concept to reality at warp speed, fueled by chocolate, Mountain Dew and coffee. I always enjoy working with my team on real projects.

Plus, there will be a ton of great networking with other developers and with Twitter employees.

So, as we head into March, we’ve got about six weeks to kick around ideas for a hack day project. Rich has one already, and I have some nebulous thoughts that might make an idea.

This is where you can help. Drop your ideas for what we could build in the comments.

Or just comment. Ideas are not required.

And hey, if you want to attend and hack with us, sign up now, the more the merrier.