What's perhaps most remarkable about the rise of Twitter is the way little the service has evolved from the initial core notion of the 140-character tweet--which is to say, not at all. It is tempting to view overvalued and tweeting as Twitter itself as overhyped and insignificant, and foolish. But there's some technology at work that is sophisticated, supple, and also revolutionary. Appreciating the machinery of Twitter is key to comprehending how an idea so easy changed the way millions of people's existences are advertised by they to the entire world.
How can you look inside a tweet? It is easy; a tweet's structure is a matter of public record. Twitter, as a modern Web company, shows to the world several of the technology it uses, in the type of an application programming interface--an API--which enables external software developers to create tools together with the service, which makes it more extensively used and therefore more precious for everyone.
Exactly the same anatomy is shared by all tweets. To examine the guts of a tweet, you request an "API key" from Twitter, which will be an easy, automated procedure. It is a simplified model of JavaScript called JSON. API essentially means "speaks (and reads) JSON." The language comes in a bundle of which compose a tweet of name/value fields, 31.
You know the way the National Security Agency accumulates "metadata" regarding the phone calls Americans make? Well, that's what these areas are, except instead of metadata about phone calls, this is metadata about tweets. The truth is, those 140 characters are less than 10 percent of all the data you'll find in a tweet item. Twitter's metadata is openly documented by the company, open for perusal by all and accessible to anybody who wants to join an API key.
This metadata contains not only sizable numerals like "25" but also entire new sets of name/value pairs--big odd trees of information. One example is in the "coordinates" part of the tweet. This value contains geographical information--latitude and longitude--in a format called GeoJSON, a dialect that is used to refer to places. This could look complicated at first, but it's actually amazing, since this means that straightforward-to-understand formats like JSON can express some fairly sophisticated notions about the planet. Twitter n't controls GeoJSON; it's a printed, open standard. Twitter has added another discipline, called "place." Places are not only dots on a map but "special, named places." They contain multiple coordinates -- they really define polygons within the top of the earth. A tweet can hence include a really rough outline of certain state. Several tweets can, as a primitive atlas, serve with some digital fiddling. And through some somewhat complicated mathematics, they can disclose how much one tweeter is from another. Tweets also provide a "created_at" field, which signals the exact time where they were posted.
How can you look inside a tweet? It is easy; a tweet's structure is a matter of public record. Twitter, as a modern Web company, shows to the world several of the technology it uses, in the type of an application programming interface--an API--which enables external software developers to create tools together with the service, which makes it more extensively used and therefore more precious for everyone.
Exactly the same anatomy is shared by all tweets. To examine the guts of a tweet, you request an "API key" from Twitter, which will be an easy, automated procedure. It is a simplified model of JavaScript called JSON. API essentially means "speaks (and reads) JSON." The language comes in a bundle of which compose a tweet of name/value fields, 31.
You know the way the National Security Agency accumulates "metadata" regarding the phone calls Americans make? Well, that's what these areas are, except instead of metadata about phone calls, this is metadata about tweets. The truth is, those 140 characters are less than 10 percent of all the data you'll find in a tweet item. Twitter's metadata is openly documented by the company, open for perusal by all and accessible to anybody who wants to join an API key.
This metadata contains not only sizable numerals like "25" but also entire new sets of name/value pairs--big odd trees of information. One example is in the "coordinates" part of the tweet. This value contains geographical information--latitude and longitude--in a format called GeoJSON, a dialect that is used to refer to places. This could look complicated at first, but it's actually amazing, since this means that straightforward-to-understand formats like JSON can express some fairly sophisticated notions about the planet. Twitter n't controls GeoJSON; it's a printed, open standard. Twitter has added another discipline, called "place." Places are not only dots on a map but "special, named places." They contain multiple coordinates -- they really define polygons within the top of the earth. A tweet can hence include a really rough outline of certain state. Several tweets can, as a primitive atlas, serve with some digital fiddling. And through some somewhat complicated mathematics, they can disclose how much one tweeter is from another. Tweets also provide a "created_at" field, which signals the exact time where they were posted.