Twitter has just published a blog post reporting that the platform is currently supporting one million registered third-party apps, built by more than 750,000 developers around the world. And a new app is registered every 1.5 seconds. Furthermore, since December 2010, more than $500 million has been invested in companies in the Twitter ecosystem companies, and more than a billion dollars has been paid out in acquisitions.
These are impressive stats for Twitter’s developer ecosystem, considering that the platform only supported 150,000 apps a year ago. Today, the company is also unveiling a new developer portal, which aims to create a more centralized platform for third-party developers.
The portal, which was launched using Drupal, includes a new discussion forum, moving away from the mailing list that twitter used previously. Discussions can be filtered by “Hot Topics” for the most popular conversations. And you can subscribe to the categories and threads that interest you most. A “Dev Teatime” section aims to be a more social feature for devs to meet.
The new developer-focused blog will include API announcements, events, tips and how-tos, case studies on apps, product insights, and more. Documentation has been improved in terms of structure and searchability.
Twitter has also rolled out a new, streamlined app manager and improved search at dev.twitter.com with filters and archives from the developer groups mailing list.
Twitter has had a tenuous relationships with its developers, and the new portal is one way to improve communications. In March, Twitter basically told developers to avoid competing with them on native clients. It’s not that Twitter doesn’t want developers to build off their platform, they just don’t want developers to build clients that mimic Twitter’s own services. As we’ve written in the past, this is business, not personal. But the FTC reportedly is making inquiries about whether the company’s developer policies are anti-competitive.