In This Chapter
Gaining the respect of your peers
Gaining the respect of your users
Twitter's API is open, which means anybody can start developing a Twitter app. This has led to a multitude of applications and a flourishing community of Twitter developers. Just like any other community, there are highly respected members, and there are those who are considered a burden on the rest of the community. You should strive to be a respected, contributing Twitter developer.
In this chapter, I list ten traits of a respectable Twitter developer. Follow these traits and your peers and customers will hold you in high regard.
Don't perform any action on users' behalf without first getting their consent.
Don't send a tweet on users' behalf without first getting their permission. Just because they authenticated with your application doesn't mean they gave gratis to post whatever you want to their Twitter stream.
Don't make users follow your application's Twitter account without first asking for their permission.
Before you ask a question in the Twitter API Google Group (http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk), make sure you first
Look for an answer in the Twitter API wiki.
Search previous posts in the Google Group.
Note
The developer community is a great resource, but they frown upon unnecessary queries. Nothing is more agitating to community contributors than answering the same questions over and over again. Be a good community member and do your homework before you recruit help.
Twitter limits the amount of API requests an authenticated user and an IP address can make per hour. This limit is in place to help with Twitter's server load and prevent rogue applications from degrading API access for everyone. You need to monitor your API use using the account/rate_limit_status method, and avoid going over your limit.
Tip
If you need more API requests per hour, you can apply for whitelisting at http://twitter.com/help/request_whitelisting.
The Twitter community at large frowns on the practice of mass following to gain reciprocal followers. There are several tactics for accomplishing this, but they all involve following a large number of people and dropping those who don't follow back.
You're better than this. Don't do it.
Even shadier is dropping all but a few people to give the appearance of false popularity. Using the API to automate this practice is highly frowned upon and may be against Twitter's terms of service. If you create an app of this nature, you will not receive much love from either the developer community or the support staff at Twitter.
Twitter legally must protect its trademarks. This includes the word "twitter."
To be extra safe, strive to deviate from Twitter's branding as much as possible. Numerous apps have adopted prefixing "tw" to their brand. Break out of the pack. Avoid "twitter," "tweet," "twit," for sure, and I'll give you bonus points for avoiding "tw" altogether.
The Twitter developer community is strong, and it's a great resource when you're seeking API help. Whenever possible, you should try to give back to the community with such contributions as these:
Answering questions on the developer Google Group
Contributing to open source Twitter libraries that make it easy for other developers to get involved in Twitter development
Doing these sorts of things will garner goodwill in the community, and the next time you need assistance, people will go the extra mile to help you.
You should strive to access the API as little as possible. One key to doing this is to cache the data you retrieve from the API. Reuse the data you've already retrieved as much as possible. This takes load off of Twitter's servers and speeds up your application. It also saves your rate limit.
If you must authenticate a user with Twitter, you should use OAuth instead of basic authentication. Basic authentication requires that you, the developer, manage users' passwords. This is a risk for the user and a liability for the developer. Further, users have become skeptical of applications that ask for their passwords, for fear that their account might be compromised.
With OAuth, you never have to deal with users' passwords. Users give your application permission to access their private data from Twitter's side of the fence.
Take a tip from Google's company motto and don't be evil. This includes honoring the wishes of private account holders. Private users may give your application permission to access their tweets. Keep these users' data confidential.
Note
When users give you their trust, you should work hard not to break that trust.
Users will want to give you feedback, report bugs, and ask you questions about your application. You should make yourself available by either
Providing contact information
Integrating a reporting tool into your application, such as
UserVoice (
http://uservoice.com)GetSatisfaction (
http://getsatisfaction.com)
Identifying yourself to your users gives your application credibility and shows you aren't a fly-by-night operation.