There have been Twitter conferences and meet-ups to chat about the direction of the microblog service, but Twitter revealed that it will be hosting a developer conference in 2010.
Twitter Platform Director Ryan Sarver, the driving force behind Twitter’s geolocation efforts, said Twitter will hold the Chirp developer conference in San Francisco sometime next year. Those interested can sign up to learn more via e-mail here, but there are no other details at this time.
Sarver disclosed the event during the Le Web 09 conference in Paris Dec. 9, where he also said the Twitter Firehose API-the rich source of user data-will be available for every company next year, for a fee.
Think of it as an homage to the developers of the more than 50,000 applications that have been created with Twitter APIs since 2007.
Applications such as Cotweet, TweetMeme and others are thriving, and what better way to celebrate their success than with a developer event? These go over great for Google and Facebook, which have used such events to wow developers with new tools and platforms.
According to The Next Web blog, Sarver also said Twitter will launch a new developer site with documentation, tutorials, status dashboard and other perks in a few weeks.
“It is clear that Twitter is going to focus highly [on] applications and wants to become more clear in their communication to developers,” according to The Next Web. “A new program called Previews will give developers early access to new features. They also want to become more helpful in applications making money. According to Ryan they want to help developers make more money so that Twitter can make more money.”
Making money would be a positive step for Twitter to help its latest investors recoup their $100 million investment in the company, which has struck deals to let Google and Microsoft index its tweets. Financial terms of those deals are closely guarded secrets.
Earlier this week, Twitter teamed with Citysearch and Urbanspoon, which are serving up Twitter’s new Sign-Up API to let local businesses integrate their Twitter account or create a new account directly from the business profiles. No money is changing hands there.
Twitter is also expected to launch premium subscription services with analytics to help businesses boost their promotional opportunities on the microblog site. Some companies don’t seem to need the help.
Dell told Bloomberg it has racked up $6.5 million from selling computers, software and accessories through Twitter. More than 100 employees tweet products and services through 35 different Twitter accounts.
The number of users signing up to get Dell’s tweets has risen 23 percent in the past three months and now numbers 1.5 million, said Manish Mehta, vice president of Dell’s online unit.
It’s not such a stretch to think that the Twitter developer conference will foster new ideas for generating dollars through the microblog site.
