Updating the realtime API experience

[andypiper]

Hey there!

Today, we announced plans to update the realtime APIs to support more modern concepts such as webhooks, whilst aiming to offer many of the features you’ve traditionally consumed via the standard streaming APIs.

This is a big step forward in terms of our realtime streaming APIs, and we’re excited to work with you as we roll out the initial Account Activity API.

In the initial release, the Account Activity API supports a webhook-based system that enables up to 50 users to access to Direct Message data. Over time, we plan to expanding the scope of activities delivered to include Replies, @mentions, Retweets, Likes, Follows and more.

We are excited to release this new data access method because we believe it has some distinct advantages for the type of data being delivered:

• Speed: Webhooks delivers data as it happens. We believe this is vastly superior to the previous REST access method to get Direct Messages and other activities related to an account.
• Simplicity: Eventually many different activities will be delivered via webhooks, which means that you can manage all the account related you need with a single connection.
• Scale: Our REST API access for these activities is rate limited. With this new product and our plan for the future of the API you’ll be able to grow and get more access as you need it.
• Reliability: Because we get an acknowledgement back on a webhooks activity, delivery we can build new features that ensure you never miss an activity.

We’re excited to talk to you about our roadmap and the functionality that we are looking to rapidly bring to bear in the Twitter API platform.

[lgladdy]

So, it looks like the user stream API is going to disappear and only the web hook based API remain unless I’m missing something?

So no more streaming twitter clients (unless you want to build your own infrastructure to pipe webhooks to your own client?)

[jefflesser]

You are correct that User stream will eventually be going away and the Account Activity API which is webhooks based will be replacing it.

How you’ve decided to set up your application and the tools you use will determine how you are able to bring the data into your solution.

[Alasdair]

Progress is good, and I’m excited by the breadth of changes. However I’m concerned that during the process small organisations like the one I work for are squeezed out due to financial reasons.

We work with publicly funded arts organisations, we are publicly funded and a charity ourselves. We looked at Gnip before however it’s pricing structure was prohibitive when with a well functioning stream + REST based approach we could match the coverage (going forward only, no historical recovery).

I really hope these changes don’t mean we are finally squeezed out permanently, either due to lack of features on the ‘basic’ plan or a severe limitation in number of webhooks we can register without paying.

[joncipriano]

Hi @Alasdair,

This is a concern we have heard and are hoping to address with new approaches to our product lineup.

See the following roadmap item. More details to come in the future.

[dswiese]

This seems like a great step forward in openness and communication with developers.

Thank you!

[eliasisrael]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for this info. For those using Site Streams (or even large individual User Streams), should I read this to be saying that we need to he able to handle an individual webhook call for each timeline event? Given that that each webhook call is done using HTTPS (asuming I’m reading the docs correctly), this seems like a really heavyweight way of processing (especially if one is dealing with thousands of status updates per second).

I can see this for DMs or other relatively low-volume types of account activity, but I don’t see how this is going to evolve for high-frequency events like timelines.

Is there any guidance on that? Thanks.

Best,
Eli Israel
Meshfire

[andypiper]

We emailed all site streams partners on thursday via the email addresses associated with the approved applications.

[craft_ryan]

I’m a site stream user and never received an email. Just the generic announcement one from Twitter Dev. How can I get sent this email?