Twitter Says Social-Networking Site Has Attracted 1 Million Applications
July 6 (Bloomberg) -- Michael Kim of Cendana Capital talks about the outlook for the social media and venture capital industries. Kim talks with Emily Chang and Jon Erlichman on Bloomberg Television's "Bloomberg West." (Source: Bloomberg)
Twitter Inc., facing regulatory scrutiny into its relationship with outside developers, said support from programmers continues to grow, evidenced by the platform’s more than 1 million registered applications.
The number of apps is up from 150,000 a year ago, Twitter said today in a blog posting. More than 750,000 developers are working with the company. Twitter also is starting a new developer site where people can connect directly with staff, exchange ideas and find resources for products or businesses.
“The entire Twitter team is committed to investing in the ecosystem by listening to developers and enabling them with the right tools and information,” the San Francisco-based company said in the blog posting.
The move follows criticism that Twitter is squeezing out programmers by co-opting their features. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission began contacting software makers as part of a preliminary inquiry into Twitter’s business practices, two people familiar with the matter said this month. The agency is responding to complaints that Twitter is making it harder for some software developers to design applications that run in concert with the company’s service, said one of the people.
Ecosystem Competition
“It’s the ecosystem of applications built around these services that will allow them to continue to grow in popularity,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Stamford, Connecticut-based Gartner Inc. “The problem that they’ve had is that the ecosystem model works, except when suddenly you find yourself in competition with partners in your ecosystem.”
Twitter, which lets people communicate in 140-character messages, has seen its usage surge -- helped by celebrities, politicians and journalists adopting the service. It’s used by 13 percent of U.S. online adults, up from 8 percent in November, as more older Americans embrace Twitter, according to a report last month by the Pew Research Center in Washington.
Twitter is raising money in an investment round that values the company at $7 billion, people familiar with the deal said last week.
To contact the reporters on this story: Brian Womack in San Francisco at bwomack1@bloomberg.net; Douglas MacMillan in San Francisco at Dmacmillan3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net
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