Twitter wants to get on the good side of third-party app developers with some new features for its expanded-tweet Cards, but the main focus of these new features is still to cement Twitter’s control over its ecosystem. Read more »
Facebook’s decision to block Yandex’s app for being a ‘search engine’ – something Yandex disputes – is final, so the Russian outfit has pulled back for now. Read more »
App.net plans to launch a file storage API on Monday, allowing developers to build apps that use photos or files in their products, which are hosted by the users connected to their App.net accounts. Users will start with 10 GB of space to host information. Read more »
Twitter added nine new companies to its Certified Products Program on Thursday, highlighting companies in the areas of marketing and analytics as companies it looks to partner with. Read more »
The web has thoroughly infiltrated the political process, much like TV did in the 1960s. A series of posts on how the Obama team managed to analyze data, format its emails and now, build a fundraising API are showing how much web savvy and infrastructure matters. Read more »
Competitive advantage used to come from using pricey enterprise applications to create operational efficiencies. Ross Mason of MuleSoft says SaaS and APIs have killed that model, and the future belongs to companies that integrate applications to discover new business models. Read more »
Twitter has been restricting the ways in which external services can use its API, and has also said that it plans to launch curation tools for journalists — both of which could potentially affect Storify’s future. But co-founder Burt Herman says the company isn’t afraid. Read more »
Clever, a Y Combinator-backed education data startup, is announcing Monday that it has raised $3 million in seed funding from a big group of investors, including top Silicon Valley venture capitalists and education technology leaders. Read more »
Pearson may be a giant of corporate publishing. But now it is throwing DK’s rich encyclopedic image bank and dozens of classic novels in with the content it wants developers to re-use in their own apps. Read more at paidContent »
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was brought back into the company last year to be its chief product visionary, but his role appears to have been dramatically reduced. So who is Twitter’s product visionary now, and what does that mean for the future of the service? Read more »
Many interested in deploying software defined networks are eager for the agility and programmability they can provide. But the fear of breaking their network means IT is leery of deploying SDNs. Apigee has updated its API management products to work on SDNs to alleviate those fears. Read more »
One developer who has been creating custom Twitter applications for corporate clients says the network’s crackdown on use of its API makes him afraid for his livelihood, but could also damage the company’s long-term prospects if enough people like him start looking for alternatives. Read more »
Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter and the company’s former CEO during the beginning of its evolution from a side project into a major social-media entity, says that the influence of the network’s ecosystem has been overstated. But is that true? Read more »
Twitter’s ongoing moves to control more of its network — in order to monetize it — is an attempt to turn back the clock and undo some of the openness it started out with. But will it also rob the service of what made it so powerful? Read more »
Twitter’s ongoing evolution from open platform to global media company has all kinds of ramifications for the social-media industry and for businesses, but it also has implications for users. This is my attempt to look at why I have a love-hate relationship with the service. Read more »
As Twitter continues to expand its control over the content that runs through its network, even as it forms partnerships with large TV networks like NBC, media entities of all kinds are going to have to ask whether their reliance on the service is wise. Read more »
As Twitter shuts off the access that services like Instagram and Tumblr used to have to its valuable “follower graph,” it is also promoting the new relationships it has with media players like NBC. Between them, those two moves speak volumes about the company’s future. Read more »
A number of new data markets have emerged in the past few years that provide access to data for decision making. It’s early days, however, with plenty of kinks to work out on both the technology side and with business models. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The reaction to Twitter’s restrictions on its API has focused mostly on whether the moves are unfair to third-party developers and apps. But what about the impact they will have on users? Twitter seems to care more about monetizing its network than what users want. Read more »
What does Twitter’s new API version mean for developers? Thursday’s news that the company would place new restrictions on its API elicited quite the response on Twitter itself. Read more »
Twitter announced Thursday that it will be rolling out changes and restrictions to its API in the coming weeks, providing third-party developers with greater clarification on its earlier warnings. Read more »
Most critics of Dalton Caldwell’s App.net project seem to see it as a replacement for Twitter, only with users paying for the service rather than advertisers. But what the service really wants to be is a central messaging bus and open ecosystem for the social web. Read more »
The way Facebook and Twitter have been controlling and/or closing down their platforms to outsiders may have parallels to the way other technology leaders have behaved in the past, but both companies need to be careful that they don’t ruin their platforms in the process. Read more »
Apigee, a company that helps manage and monitor APIs, snagged a $20 million round of funding led by new investor Focus Ventures, with participation from current investors Bay Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, SAP Ventures and Third Point Ventures. Read more »
Facebook’s shutdown of the Face.com API and Twitter’s increasing clampdown on its API reinforce the lesson that “open” APIs can be very appealing, but they can also become a lot less open over time — and developers and users can get trapped in the middle. Read more »
Beneath the furor over Twitter’s clampdown on its API is the same dilemma that many traditional media companies like the New York Times are also confronting — namely, how much should you be an open platform, and how much should you be a destination? Read more »
Twitter has made it clear it plans to crack down on third-party services by tightening the rules on use of the network, but this desire for control — and the drive to monetize its user base — could ruin what made Twitter special to begin with. Read more »
In a move that suggests Google is coming to see itself as a content owner, the company is threatening legal action against sites that let users strip audio from YouTube videos and play them as stand-alone audio clips. Read more at paidContent »
Google gave its Google+ platform a significant facial lift Wednesday morning, simplifying access to some of its core functions with a new sidebar. Right now, it only hosts a half dozen Google+ shortcuts, but eventually, it could be come a launchpad for third-party apps. Read more »
French startup Jolicloud has spent the last few years trying to do ambitious things with cloud-based computers, operating systems and portable desktops — but it’s failed to get much mainstream traction. Can its new service for centralizing your data change all that? Read more »
New York City kicked off voting on Thursday on its third annual BigApps competition, which rewards apps that use its open data sets. But one of the most popular resources appears to be Foursquare, which is in use in more than half of the top apps. Read more »
Personalized algorithms and social recommendations are great for a lot of things. But when it comes to getting news, these technologies can create an echo chamber, where our existing beliefs are reflected back to us. Uberpaper, a new site from Dmitry Shapiro, wants to combat that. Read more »
After a variety of strategies and around $100 million in funding, startup Tendril is now largely a software company, and on Tuesday at the DistribuTECH conference in San Antonio, Tendril announced a big partner in its play to provide the software layer for electric vehicles: BMW. Read more »
Personal security app Guardly, which launched back in April 2011 on the iPhone and iPod touch, announced Thursday morning that it will now offer a special program for students at 67 universities and colleges across Canada, designed as an extension of on-campus security measures. Read more »
At a press event in San Francisco on Wednesday evening, Facebook unveiled a host of new apps — more than 60 in total — that integrate with its Timeline user interface. The social networking company also announced it will begin approving Timeline apps from all developers. Read more »
Apigee, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based API management platform and services company is buying San Francisco-based Usergrid, as part of its increasing focus on the mobile app business as the web shifts to a mobile-first development model. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read more »
Exclusive. Gnip is making it very clear it’s not just about Twitter anymore. The company, which provides aggregated API access to a variety of social media streams, has significantly expanded its partnership with Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com. Read more »
RunKeeper is taking another step forward with its HealthGraph API initiative by updating its user reports feature. New, simpler Fitness Reports incorporate more health data. As the number of health-related gadgets and apps grows, RunKeeper’s HealthGraph API is becoming the glue to track such data. Read more »
London-based startup Pusher began life in unusual fashion — but now, thanks to its tools to let developers build real-time services quickly and easily — it is hoping to become the foundation for a new generation of online apps. Read more »
Google Plus now offers its users an option to fine-tune their social feeds with volume sliders. It’s an interesting first step towards a more personalized social web. Now let’s make these kinds of filtering functionality available to developers so we can finally have a Tebow filter. Read more »
