User Streams Update

[John Kalucki]

The User Streams product launch is moving along as planned. We haven't had any downtime and we've only had a few subtle functionality problems to refine. In short, all is going very well. End-users have been overwhelmingly positive about the experience of real-time updates without rate limits. We're very excited about getting User Streams out to everyone!

We intend to move this product into an open beta test period soon, and then on into full production shortly thereafter. We have a few more developer-facing changes to make, and a bit more tinkering with the production environment to do before we can move on to these next steps. These changes may require minor code changes on some clients, and we'll have to allow some time for these changes to be pushed and to settle out.

The plan remains as previous announced. A re-cap:

1) All desktop client developers are encouraged to transition to User Streams and reduce their reliance on the REST API.

2) Web sites and other large scale integrations are not supported on User Streams and must use Site Streams. Apply for the beta test here: http://dev.twitter.com/pages/site_streams

3) Prototype against betastream.twitter.com/2b/user.json, but do not ship product against this preview cluster. Limit your prototype distribution to at most a few dozen controlled instances.

4) Contact us at a...@twitter.com so that we can move you onto the full User Streams cluster. We need to ensure that there's sufficient capacity, that we have a valid contact information, and other implementation details have been addressed.

5) Once stable on the new endpoint, release beta test versions of your client against the User Streams cluster.

6) Push updates to your beta testers as required.

7) User Streams will move into a fully-open beta period in several weeks, and the preview endpoint will be removed.

8) Following a successful beta period, User Streams will graduate into full production status.

Apologies if you received unclear messages about the status of this product launch. At least one developer fell through the cracks, and I want to ensure that everyone has appropriate access to this API.

-John Kalucki

http://twitter.com/jkalucki

Twitter, Inc.

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Quoting John Kalucki <jo...@twitter.com>:

> The User Streams product launch is moving along as planned. We haven't had
> any downtime and we've only had a few subtle functionality problems to
> refine. In short, all is going very well. End-users have been overwhelmingly
> positive about the experience of real-time updates without rate limits.
> We're very excited about getting User Streams out to everyone!
>
> We intend to move this product into an open beta test period soon, and then
> on into full production shortly thereafter. We have a few more
> developer-facing changes to make, and a bit more tinkering with the
> production environment to do before we can move on to these next steps.
> These changes may require minor code changes on some clients, and we'll have
> to allow some time for these changes to be pushed and to settle out.

Do you have any hints/guesses on how the delivered data might change
as a result of these changes? I'm happy with what's coming down the
pipe now - I'm mostly interested in whether there might be more
coming, less coming, or an expansion of how many terms I can put in
the "track" component.

> 8) Following a successful beta period, User Streams will graduate into full
> production status.

Do you have any hints/guesses on how the policies/management details
will be structured? Things like terms of service, pricing - all that
lawyerly / accountantly stuff.
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
http://borasky-research.net http://twitter.com/znmeb

"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." - Paul Erdos

[John Kalucki]

As soon as an issue is clear, we tend to announce what we've learned. If I had the list of changes ready to go, I would have posted them.

The current general Twitter API TOS applies to User Streams. Follow the TOS and the User Streams Implementation Suggestions...

-John Kalucki

http://twitter.com/jkalucki

Twitter Inc.