Despite criticism that has tried to sabotage the efforts of third-party developers, Twitter announced Monday that its developer ecosystem now includes more than 1 million registered applications, up from 150,000 apps in 2010.
“A new app is registered every 1.5 seconds, fueling a spike in ecosystem growth in the areas of analytics, curation and publisher tools,” the social media site said on its blog. “Apps help people understand and make the most of Twitter, whether they’re on the web, on mobile, and even watching television.” In the post, the company highlighted standout efforts such as Poptweets, the popular iPhone trivia game giving users the chance to match tweets with the famous people who said them, and the White House’s first Twitter Town Hall provided by Mass Relevance, among others.
To coincide with crossing the million-app mark, the microblogging powerhouse launched a new developer site. It includes an improved discussions section, an updated blog, better documentation, improved app management and enhanced search. The updated developer site was introduced using Drupal, which offers more flexibility and a large developer network.
Twitter has found itself under scrutiny from third-party developers, particularly in the mobile app space. After its acquisitions of iPhone client Tweetie and former No. 1 third-party app TweetDeck, Twitter appeared to be undercutting the work of third parties. But the company has recently been stressing its cooperation with third-party developers, especially after its announcement last month that Apple’s iOS 5 will feature full integration with Twitter, although admittedly, that announcement also received similar criticism.
In the meantime, users will continue to be able to choose whether they want to send their 140-character blasts and photos from the thousands of third-party options, or Twitter’s own photo sharing and official mobile apps.
