I wrote a post last week about building a maintenance plan into any Twitter consulting agreement. One of the reasons I gave then was the continuing evolution of the Twitter API. It is a certainty that this code will continue to change, and many of these changes have the potential of breaking your code. This announcement on the Twitter development mailing list is a perfect example.
The most fundamental part of the API, the format of data returned for every tweet, is about to change in a way that will probably break Javascript apps that talk to the API, and could break apps in other languages as well. Adapting to this change won’t be hard, and Twitter warned developers that this is coming. But who warns the clients? How will someone who paid for Twitter to be integrated into their site handle this?
It isn’t possible for non-programmers to read all the messages on the developer’s mailing list and make the necessary changes. Consultants need to watch out for clients and they deserve to be paid for doing so. Otherwise, clients will decide that Twitter apps are unreliable, and that they soon fail. For their own good, consultants need to warn clients that this type of change is inevitable, and help them plan for it. If any client doesn’t agree, have them read this announcement.
