I just got an email from Matt Mullenweg over at Automattic saying they’ve implemented the Twitter API on wordpress.com. This means you can use any configurable Twitter client to post to and read from wordpress.com blogs.
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/twitter-api/
I haven’t tried it out yet, but I plan to.
It’s a beautiful move. As I said to Matt in an email: it’s both deeply respectful and deeply insidious. It’s exactly what I would do if I were in his shoes. In fact, I did do it, in 1999, when the Blogger API came out. I immediately implemented it in our Manila blogging software.
The implications? Well, the Twitter API may have just become an open standard. I know that Identica has already implemented it, but wordpress.com has a much larger installed base. Where the client vendors may have overlooked the connection to Identica, they will be tempted by the connection to WordPress. Should they implement special features for WordPress? Hmmm.
The big question — what will Matt & Company do next?
And should I send him the feature requests the Twitter guys have been ignoring? 
UNBERKELEY 
Posted by Fábio Silva on December 12, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Hi David, welcome to WordPress!
🙂
Posted by Fábio Silva on December 12, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Sorry, its “Dave” . 🙂
Posted by Jeremy Zilar on December 12, 2009 at 1:09 pm
You should post the feature list for us all to see ad weigh in on.
Posted by Dave Winer on December 12, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Jeremy, like all clones, the feature list is the same as the thing they’re cloning — we hope.
The evidence is that (they claim) you can just change the URL from twitter.com to wordpress.com in the setup screen on Tweetie. If that’s true, then it’s transparent.
The fun starts if they relax some of the limits of the Twitter API and fix some of the glaring problems.
As we talked in our meetup last week, it may make sense to have a bit more than 140 characters per tweet. Since WordPress posts don’t have a 140 character limit, it may make sense for them to do useful stuff with characters past 140.
Next idea — let’s have a metadata field in a tweet for a link, so the URL doesn’t have to take up space in the tweet. Of course since WordPress already supports RSS and it has the concept of a link associated with a post, it seems likely that WordPress can already handle this.
Then there’s the idea of payloads. Again, since WordPress supports RSS and RSS has enclosures, they probably already have a way of attaching media objects to posts. The question is should they show that capability through their implementation of the Twitter API.
These are all vexing issues and the way WordPress moves forward may well make a big difference in the evolution of the Twitter API. ALso whether the Twitter folk consider the possibility that the Twitter API is now an open standard. With success comes a lot of interesting puzzles!
So now two worlds meet, and they negotiate what the intersection looks like.
This is why I love Matt and his company because they plot little zingers like this that mess up the (apparent) orderliness of the universe.
Posted by Jeroen de Miranda on December 12, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Hi Dave,
Good observation! Additionally, I think this move is also clearly meant to as a sort of counter measure against ‘ease of use’ emerging blogging platforms such as http://posterous.com
Posterous makes it even easier than WordPress to publish onto your blog, by using email. No html knowledge is necessary on that platform.
I am an enthousiastic WordPress user; and any tighter integration with social media platforms such as Twitter is very welcome!
Posted by Raanan Bar-Cohen on December 13, 2009 at 6:42 pm
@Jeroen — just as an aside re: email and WordPress. On WordPress.com we have implemented a really easy but flexible way to post-by-email. You may want to check it out: http://en.support.wordpress.com/post-by-email/
Posted by Mark Essel on December 17, 2009 at 11:59 am
Is there a plugin for that (for hosted solutions)?
The “super secret” email address is too secret even for me 😉
Posted by jesseluna on December 17, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Mark – You can set up Post by Email on hosted solutions via your WP Settings>Writing panel from the Dashboard.
Posted by jak on December 17, 2009 at 3:58 pm
WordPress.com has done a pretty good job of matching or bettering many of the posterous features. But I don’t think they are getting the word out to people as well. The marketing of it is tougher. WordPress.com does more, so it is more difficult for unique features to standout.
Maybe WordPress.com should come out with a much simpler version of the platform geared as a Tumblr/Posterous killer/clone? Something easy for non tech people, super integrated with social, email, chat, and broswer, with some easy CSS theme options. Just thinking out loud.
Posted by Mike Cane on December 12, 2009 at 1:32 pm
You realize this now brings me one step closer to what I asked for weeks ago when you displayed your blog with your tweets in it. I wanted my tweets to go directly to a private WordPress.com blog for me as backup and for searching, all automagically.. Right now, I don’t have a client that can use the API, but when I do — bam! Done.
Posted by Chris Messina on December 12, 2009 at 1:45 pm
I’m curious what the answer to @dewitt’s questions will be: what is the license of the Twitter API? Is it copyright infringement for Automattic to mirror it in WordPress?
http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_frm/thread/9f90046f6469fb7b/64add3e7a298b395?#64add3e7a298b395
I should hope not, but it would be very useful to have this issue cleared before people standardize on what it otherwise one company’s presumed IP.
Posted by Dave Winer on December 12, 2009 at 1:51 pm
You are aware that Identica clones the Twitter API and (as far as I know) Twitter has never objected.
Also, I don’t think copyright applies to APIs — I didn’t have to get a license to implement the Twitter API in my apps. I’ve never seen Twitter assert a copyright.
Kind of a false controversy here, imho.
Posted by Chris Messina on December 12, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Indeed, Identica does clone the Twitter API, and they too are operating in a gray area. I suppose they could assume that Twitter’s ambivalence towards this equals condonement, but I wonder what would happen if, say, Facebook implemented Twitter’s API as well.
Perhaps Twitter would love for everyone to implement their API — and perhaps they’d be happy to give it away for free. I really don’t know, which is why I echoed Dewitt’s question.
Copyright absolutely applies to APIs — and as Dewitt pointed out in his email — Twitter reserves their right to protect their intellectual property. Given this stance, it’s worth having a definitive answer as to whether their protections apply to their API.
It’s one thing to implement support for the Twitter API in a client; it’s another to use the design of the API in a competing or related product — and not expect Twitter to have some interest in that — especially if you call it “Twitter API compatible”.
I’m not interested in raising a false controversy, I’m just interested in clarification from Twitter on the license of their API. Seems responsible to me, even if you disagree with me, or think my issues are “ridiculous”.
Posted by John Uckele on December 12, 2009 at 4:44 pm
APIs are not protected under copyright. Think of an API like a menu at a restaurant. Restaurant’s can’t claim they own $4 french fries, however they might own the recipe they serve up when you order $4 french fries.
Posted by Chris Messina on December 12, 2009 at 4:49 pm
The documentation for an API can be copyrighted — and so can the code that implements it. While the functionality of an API is usually covered by patents, there is still definitely a question of whether Twitter intends to enforce any IP protections over its API, or the design thereof.
You can also copyright the design of a menu, though I doubt the content would necessarily be covered. Oh, and FWIW, recipes are one of the few things that can’t be copyrighted:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html
Posted by Dave Winer on December 12, 2009 at 4:59 pm
OK, thanks for the education, let’s move on.
Posted by Ferodynamics on December 12, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Awesome, this is going on my to-do list right now. I already post tweets from my website to Twitter and identi.ca simultaneously. This is really a genius idea, I’m curious to see how it works out.
Posted by Ren on December 12, 2009 at 5:21 pm
And alternate documentation for an API can be created by reverse engineering.
See [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design]Clean room design[/url].
Posted by rob friedman on December 12, 2009 at 6:18 pm
How Cool!
Posted by jesseluna on December 12, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Hi Dave,
As always, it’s interesting to see your perspective on new tech developments and their possible paths.
After doing some testing, the Tweetie2 WordPress accounts only allow posts of 140 characters and do not have a picture upload or link feature. They do, however, pass along location information if geotagging is turned on for the WordPress blog.
Posted by The Verbose Vixen on December 13, 2009 at 8:32 am
Question: what is a Twitter API?
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