Posted by Shane Becker on
About a year ago, WordPress.com did something really cool. They rolled out a clone of the Twitter API for their service. This allowed existing Twitter client apps, like Tweetie 2 (now Twitter for iPhone) and Twitterific, to be used as WordPress.com client apps too. A few days later, Tumblr did the same thing. Super fucking cool.
Now I could use Tweetie to post to Tumblr blog, my WordPress.com blog or any number of my Twitter accounts all from the same app. How fucking awesome is that?
Nearly everyone uses Twitter. (If they don’t use Twitter, they use Facebook.) One of the knock-on effects of Twitter’s pervasiveness is that there are heaps of Twitter client apps for iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), BlackBerry, Android, Windows, Mac and Linux. Hell, Amiga probably has a Twitter client app. Seriously, what platform doesn’t a have Twitter client app? What that means is WordPress.com and Tumblr have native client apps are nearly every platform.
Imagine if you built a web service of some sort and did the same thing. If you built a clone of the Twitter API then instantly you have a slew of native client apps already installed on everyone’s phones and computers. Fucking insane!
So. I think Ruby community needs to get on this. Imagine if we had a gem that was a clone of the Twitter API that anyone could drop into their app. Bang pow, anyone can easily and quickly harness all those Twitter client apps out in the wild.
Anyone with me?
PS. I’ve been told about Twetter. That might be a good starting point, but it seems like Twetter is more of a stand alone app and is about offline tooting. I want a drop-in library.