Is Twitter Gearing Up to Release its Own Edition of Open Graph?

By: Ali Raza  |   December 18th, 2012   |   News, Social Media

It looks like Twitter is all geared up to make a similar move to that of rival firm, Facebook, with a source revealing that the micro-blogging website is about to release its very own edition of an Open Graph style API. The move would allow third party app developers to draw information from non-human elements of a social website such as photos, apps and events in order to better cater to individual users. The move was made by Facebook some time ago­­ and has been well received.

 

The source, who was briefed by Twitter, also shared that the company will release its own edition of Open Graph “in the next couple of weeks,” and at this point in time the micro-blogging website is beginning to get feedback about their latest initiative.

 

Twitter has not made it clear which apps will feature in its version of Open Graph, but it is expected that it would be quite similar to Facebook’s edition in which app developers can “own” certain actions such as “Like”, “Read” and “Listen”.

 

Nonetheless, whatever the case may be, the context of conversation between the source and Twitter depicts that the idea for the API came about as a way of “evangelizing best practices to leverage Twitter for discovery and distribution,” besides attempting to stay at Facebook’s eye level.

 

This is not the first time that Twitter and Facebook have stood on opposite sides of one another, with an earlier occurrence centering around Instagram. Both social titans were interested in acquiring the photo editing site that is now owned by Mark Zuckerberg. The site has recently restricted its pictures from appearing on Twitter, however the micro-blogging website immediately fired back by deciding to bring in Yahoo! owned Flickr to fill the vacant spot.

 

Source: Mashable