WordPress.com Implements the Twitter API

This morning Matt Mullenweg announced on his blog that WordPress.com has enabled posting and reading blogs via the Twitter API. Now any Twitter app that supports a custom API URL (Tweetie is one such) can be used to either post updates to a WordPress.com blog, or to read updates from blogs to which one has subscribed. Dave Winer calls the move by Automattic, WordPress.com's parent company, "deeply insidious," and notes that 10 years ago he did a similar thing in his Manila blogging platform when the Blogger API came out. Winer opines that Automattic's move has made the Twitter API into an open standard, due to WordPress.com's large base. Winer notes (in a comment on the above-linked post), "The fun starts if they [WordPress] relax some of the limits of the Twitter API and fix some of the glaring problems."

Comments

I felt a great disturbance ...

[Statecraftsman]

I felt a great disturbance in the Blogosphere, as if millions of rants were posted but were abruptly truncated at 140 characters. I fear something terrible has happened.

Re:I felt a great disturbance ...

[mdenham]

I felt a great disturbance in the Blogosphere, as if millions of rants were posted but were abruptly truncated at 140 characters. I fear som

Fixed.

Misleading summary...

[Zouden]

I thought it strange that this move would be called "deeply insidious". Here's the context in Dave Winer's blog post:

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.

Since there is effectively now dozens of twitter clients capable of connecting to wordpress via this api, the api becomes a de-facto standard for accessing blogs.

Re:Misleading summary...

[nhaines]

Frankly, I'd much rather see OpenMicroBlogging being used and promoted rather than the Twitter API. It's used in StatusNet and identi.ca and allows for seamless subscriptions between various OpenMicroBlogging-enabled sites. It's sort of like the XMPP/Jabber of microblogging.

StatusNet also supports the Twitter API, but I don't know of any clients that let me point to identi.ca instead of Twitter. I use Gwibber, though which natively supports both of them and more.

Finally a use for Twitter I can support...

[Phrogman]

It will let me post to my blog. I have a Twitter account only because I was interested to see how it worked. I have made exactly 2 Tweets. Once I realized i would need friends who cared what I was doing, I realized it wasn't for me. I am happily living a rather dull existence :)

I have just realized a hitch with using this for updating my blog: I don't have a blog, and with few friends who would want to read it, not much reason to start one.

I know its old fashioned but if I think of interesting things to say, I say them to my wife or my friends face to face :P

Re:Whoosh

[maxume]

I hoped and dreamed!