The Developers Union is a good idea. I’d love to see Apple incorporate some kind of discussion at WWDC each year specifically about what the union is advocating for. Kind of like the old WWDC feedback sessions, but with a very narrow focus.

→ 2018/05/18 3:45 pm

Twitter streaming API and Micro.blog

The writing has been on the wall for years. Now that Twitter plans to move ahead with deprecating APIs that apps like Twitterrific and Tweetbot use, it’s even more clear that there’s no overlap between Twitter’s priorities for the API and what traditional clients need.

When I wrote about Icro, the first third-party app for Micro.blog, I said that I always want to encourage other developers building for Micro.blog. It’s worth exploring how these Twitter API changes compare to Micro.blog and how we can improve.

The streaming API is a big part of this. Twitter apps currently use the streaming API to deliver tweets in real-time without polling, or to notice when someone is @-mentioned so that a push notification can be delivered. Losing this API is especially frustrating because it means developers need to rewrite a bunch of code only to make their apps a little worse instead of better.

Micro.blog doesn’t actually have a streaming API yet. Micro.blog supports multiple APIs, but no persistent connection. The new app Icro doesn’t have push notifications, although the official Micro.blog app does. For a brand new app like Icro, it would be a lot for the developer to also run a server just to do push notifications.

As I think about how we solve this, I remember a discussion in the Twitter developer community when the iPhone first got push notifications. It was an open question: should Twitter third-party developers run their own servers for push notifications, or should Twitter itself deliver push notifications on behalf of third-party apps? Obviously third-party developers have had to run their own servers.

I think a goal for us with Micro.blog should be that third-party developers get access to the same basic tools that we use to build our own apps. Rate-limits should be the same for an app like Icro as they are for the official Micro.blog app, for example.

With that in mind, I’ve mentioned before that I’d like to offer a push notification service for developers. iOS and Android developers could upload their push notification credentials from Apple and Google. Micro.blog would store them and deliver push notifications directly to third-party apps.

This has a few pretty big advantages:

  • Third-party developers won’t need to run their own servers. This levels the playing field so that any Micro.blog app, no matter how small, can offer basic features like notifications.
  • Push notifications are more capable now than at their introduction in 2009. They can be used not just for an alert message but for silently sending data to an app in the background, such as when new posts have been added to someone’s timeline.
  • It’s more efficient. Instead of keeping persistent connections open to Micro.blog servers, Apple and Google handle the persistent connections between devices and the cloud. Micro.blog can simply forward @-mentions to the clients that have requested them via Apple and Google infrastructure.

This is a little bit of extra work for Micro.blog, but Micro.blog is already doing similar processing when a reply comes through. For every reply to a blog post, Micro.blog checks if there is a Webmention endpoint so that it can forward that reply to an external site, such as one hosted on WordPress. Opening up push notifications feels like a natural extension to that.

Some developers might not be comfortable outsourcing this to Micro.blog. That’s fine. In particular I’d like to hear any concerns over security or features where this approach would be too limited. (To be clear, we’d offer this for free. Our business is blog hosting.)

Back to the Twitter news. John Gruber summed it up this way:

Twitter isn’t explicitly saying that they’re shutting down third-party clients, but I don’t know that it’s feasible for them to exist if they don’t have access to these APIs. It’s like breaking up with someone by being a jerk to them rather than telling them you’re breaking up.

That’s a great analogy. Micro.blog is barely a year old, so there is plenty still to do, and there are parts of the API that aren’t as mature yet as they will be. But I think we’re transparent about what we’re trying to do and how we can support developers. We’re not going to be jerks about it.

I’m really excited by what I’m seeing from the community. Icro is in the App Store. Slate is another iPhone app currently in beta. Dialog for Android is in the Google Play Store as a public beta. And then there are all the apps following IndieWeb standards that are compatible with Micro.blog.

WWDC is only a couple weeks away. We’ll have a Micro.blog meetup on Tuesday (June 5th) at lunch. I’d love to talk to developers at the meetup or anytime that week in San Jose to get feedback on how we should handle streaming and notifications.

Twitter executing on 2012 vision

I’ll have more to say tomorrow specifically about the technical side of Twitter’s streaming API, but for now I want to highlight where this all started. In August 2012, Twitter posted to their blog about upcoming changes to their API. This was the post with the infamous 4-quadrant chart showing which third-party apps Twitter wanted to encourage, and which apps (in the upper-right quadrant) they didn’t want third-party developers to work on anymore.

From the post:

In the upper right-hand quadrant are services that enable users to interact with Tweets, like the Tweet curation service Storify or the Tweet discovery site Favstar.fm.

Although it wasn’t clear in the blog post, Twitter later clarified that Storify and Favstar were fine. Nevertheless, Storify announced last year that the service would be shutting down… tomorrow, actually. Favstar is shutting down next month.

The post from Twitter continues:

That upper-right quadrant also includes, of course, “traditional” Twitter clients like Tweetbot and Echofon. Nearly eighteen months ago, we gave developers guidance that they should not build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.” And to reiterate what I wrote in my last post, that guidance continues to apply today.

It has taken nearly 6 years, but it feels like today’s API changes finally wrap up the work that started in 2012. The apps that are possible with the new Account Activity API are exactly the apps that were encouraged in those other quadrants. The pricing makes no sense because it wasn’t designed for traditional Twitter apps like Twitterrific and Tweetbot.

Two months after that post from Twitter, I quit the platform and stopped posting to @manton in protest. I only wish I had started working on Micro.blog immediately in 2012.

Today the first third-party Android app for Micro.blog is out in beta. This is a really big deal. Now to find where that old Android test phone is buried in my messy office.

→ 2018/05/15 1:11 pm

Trying out the Cappuccino feed reader. Looks like it has partial compatibility with JSON Feed too. (Works in some feeds, but not the Micro.blog timeline feed.)

→ 2018/05/15 12:17 pm

Since the day I introduced Tweet Marker, people wondered if Twitter would add an official timeline sync API. They never did and clearly never will. It’s been about 7 years.

→ 2018/05/14 2:00 pm

Thinking about Favstar shutting down. No doubt the first of several new casualties from Twitter’s latest rule changes. The end of the third-party Twitter era has a kind a “let the past die” feel to it.

→ 2018/05/14 9:12 am

IndieWeb Summit invite

I’ll be attending IndieWeb Summit next month. If you’re interested in indie blogging or what we’re doing with Micro.blog, consider joining us for the 2-day conference in Portland. I like how gRegor Morrill highlighted that the group should be more than just programmers:

You don’t need to be a programmer! In fact, I would love to see more non-programmers attending. We need writers, graphic artists, designers, UX engineers, and anybody that wants to reclaim some of their online presence with a personal website.

There’s a lot of overlap between the Micro.blog and IndieWeb communities. As we’re now in Micro.blog’s 2nd year, I expect the platform to become more mature, and I’ll be wrapping up a few loose ends with IndieWeb technologies. IndieWeb Summit will be a great time to reflect on what we’ve been able to do and look to what’s next.

Downtown today for a meeting and while I like getting out, there are so many little ways to get derailed and lose all productivity. It’s after lunch and just feel like I’m starting to get some stuff done. Now at Alta’s for coffee and work, overlooking the lake.

→ 2018/05/11 1:28 pm

There’s an interview with me in the latest Club MacStories email newsletter. I talk a bit about the goals of Micro.blog and how people are using the platform. Also a link to Icro!

→ 2018/05/11 10:06 am

More whimsical

People often write about Micro.blog, but I don’t usually do a good job of pointing to all the reviews. A new blog post this week from Lance Somoza stood out to me:

It reminds me of the earlier days of the Internet, where everything was more whimsical and less threatening than the current status quo. When it comes to free services, we have sadly come to expect a gimmick, trade-off, or worse in exchange for our data. Micro.blog’s opposition to this idea, simply makes it a joy to use.

Thanks everyone for taking a chance on the platform. I’m really happy with how the platform has grown, from new photo blogs and microcasts to third-party apps like Icro. We don’t have ads and we don’t have venture capital funding. The support from the community drives everything.

Did you register a brand new .app domain this week but not sure where to point it? Micro.blog-hosted blogs make nice product sites. 🙂 Easy setup, custom pages, and a microblog for app news.

→ 2018/05/09 4:46 pm

One of the best things about not having an ad-supported business is it doesn’t bother us if you use an app like Icro instead of the official Micro.blog app. No need to control the timeline experience. Use whatever you like best.

→ 2018/05/09 2:24 pm

Icro 1.0

Last month I gave a talk about microblogging at Peers Conference in Austin. In it I covered Twitter’s changing attitude toward developers, from the early days when everyone wanted to build a Twitter app — as John Gruber wrote in 2009, Twitter apps were a playground for new UIs — to when Twitter started actively discouraging traditional third-party Twitter clients.

For Micro.blog, I always want to encourage third-party apps. We support existing blogging apps like MarsEdit, and we have an API for more Micro.blog-focused apps to be built. I’m excited to say that a big one just shipped in the App Store: Icro.

Icro is well-designed, fast, and takes a different approach to some features compared to the official Micro.blog app. In a few ways, it’s better than the app I built. This is exactly what I hoped for. We wanted an official app so that there’s a default to get started, but there should be other great options for Micro.blog users to choose from.

Here are a few screenshots from Icro:

Icro screenshots

Thanks to developer Martin Hartl for building Icro and being part of the Micro.blog community. You can download it for free from the App Store here.