This is the third part of a series on the future of Twitter development: Part I, Part II.
In order for Twitter to reach everywhere, a skilled labor force of API developers is needed around the world. Developers make it possible to integrate Twitter into businesses in a more useful and personalized manner. This type of integration will give Twitter ubiquity and longevity, two attributes that are almost impossible for competitors to overcome.
The API developer community is more complex than most realize. New people enter continually as students and self-taught programmers. Others come in as corporate developers who are told to work on Twitter projects. As Twitter related companies in the top tier continue to grow multi-million dollar products, they bring in experienced coders from outside the Twitter world to manage big databases and build enterprise-level tools. This is a dynamic and growing group.
Developer Labor Force
One of the great strengths of the Twitter API is that it can be run by self-taught programmers who quickly turn themselves into productive tool builders. Self-taught programmers often come out of an actual need within a business or other organization. Software start-ups and consulting companies are born as a result of this group’s work.
Students are the other influx of talent I often see in the Twitter world. Doing a research project on Twitter data now seems to be a standard task for Computer Science students. That skill set will mean that Twitter will be an obvious place for this cohort to reach for when adding features to any system. It becomes a generation’s standard for social media data.
Marketing automation companies are doing so well that HubSpot has IPO buzz. Big Data companies based on Twitter are also booming and signing multi-million dollar partnerships.
So we have an established API infrastructure, a billion dollar ad revenue stream to work beside, and a rich set of tools built by a growing and diverse tech community. It sounds like my road trip view of economics is about to play out big-time with Twitter.
