User Streams Preview Update

[John Kalucki]

User Streams is a Streaming API feature that allows clients to receive nearly all events required to update an application in real-time and without managing polling rate-limits.

Two recent changes:

*   @replies from non-mutual followings are now filtered on the server by default. This behavior now matches the www.twitter.com display. If you wish to display @replies between certain followed users and non-followed users, you can use the replies=all parameter on the /2b/user.json endpoint.

*   Social graph updates are now applied in real time and do not require a reconnect cycle. If the user follows, unfollows, blocks or unblocks another account, future events are delivered correctly.

Note that User Streams are not currently intended for large-scale integrations, but are limited, for a period, to Desktop Applications. Watch for further announcements as we scale and open up this service.

This feature is in a Preview Period -- products may not be released for general purpose beta testing just yet. If you intend to participate in the open beta period, you must be coordinating with us so that we can provide sufficient capacity.

Documentation:

http://dev.twitter.com/pages/streaming_api

http://apiwiki.twitter.com/User-Stream-Implementation-Suggestions

http://apiwiki.twitter.com/ChirpUserStreams

-John Kalucki

http://twitter.com/jkalucki

Infrastructure, Twitter Inc.