Twitter has created
a Web site for the more than 750,000 developers who design and build platforms that complement the company's social site. (Did you catch that number?) Dev.Twitter.com debuted Monday, developed with
support from the company Acquia.
The site, which uses Drupal Commons from Acquia and Acquia's services, will become the forum for all information related to developing Twitter and
complementary apps. It is the repository for documents, APIs, tips, and tutorials, complete with blog and forums designed to connect developers to the Twitter team and each other.
Developers have
created more than one million registered applications using the Twitter API, up from 150,000 apps a year ago. "A new app is registered every 1.5 seconds, fueling a spike in ecosystem growth in the
areas of analytics, curation and publisher tools," according to the company's blog.
The community has seen
more than $1 billion in acquisitions and more than $475 million in venture capital investment since December 2010.
The forum already supports discussion on tips for searching the site for
topics. While the site supports discussions for developers, I encourage marketers to log in on occasion or set up a new feed to keep in tune with trends that might influence social campaigns in
Twitter or other sites.
Twitter engineers will read the discussions daily and respond, according to Twitter's Taylor Singletary. Use categories to filter and focus. If a category doesn't meet
your need, create a new one. Those already on the site include mobile development, Twitter for Web sites, and feeds.
Acquia will provide the Enterprise Drupal support such as round-the-clock
access to technical answers, advisory support, and guidance on application integration with API and documentation systems. Drupal is free, open-source software running on industry-standard hosting
platforms connecting with virtually all legacy systems.