Grover AliceTwitter lets you find out what’s going on in the world and what people are talking about right now. Twitter is accessible from your computer or mobile device.
Without going into too much detail, an API is a way for computer programs to communicate with each other to request and provide information. To do this, a software application calls what’s called an endpoint, an address that corresponds to a specific type of information that we provide (like phone numbers, endpoints tend to be unique). Twitter provides access to some of its services through APIs so that programmers can develop software that interacts closely with Twitter, such as an application for responding to user feedback about a company on Twitter.
Twitter data is different from the data accessed by most other social networks because Twitter data contains information that users have published in the public domain.
Twitter Data Access
By default, applications can only access public Twitter information. Some endpoints, such as those that allow you to send or receive private messages, require additional permissions from the user to access the information. These permissions are not granted by default; the user may or may not grant such access to a particular application and manage all applications that have access to the account.
Twitter’s APIs include a wide range of endpoints that fall into five main groups.
Accounts and users
Allow developers to programmatically manage an account’s profile and settings, add users to a ignore or blacklist list, request information about an account’s allowed actions, etc. These endpoints can be used by civil services, such as the Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Emergency Management, to inform local emergency response and emergency notifications.
Tweets and Responses
To access tweets, developers can use search for specific keywords or request sample tweets from individual accounts.
These endpoints help nongovernmental organizations, such as the UN, identify, research, and refute misinformation about health initiatives. For example, in Indonesia, there were persistent rumors that vaccines allegedly contained pig products or caused infertility. After figuring out how these rumors originated and spread, the UN sent a team of experts to debunk the ridiculous myths, which were of particular concern to the largely Muslim population. A team of researchers at Northeastern University recently developed a new method for monitoring flu incidence based on Twitter data that can predict outbreaks six weeks in advance – much earlier than many other models, and yet just as accurately.
Personal messaging
Personal messaging endpoints provide access to the PM correspondence of users who have explicitly granted permission to an application.
Ads
A set of APIs that developers like Sprinklr use to help businesses automatically create and manage Twitter ad campaigns. Developers can use public tweets to identify topics of interest to users, and offer tools for companies to run Twitter ad campaigns targeting different audiences.
Tools for publishers and SDKs
These tools allow companies to bring live, open Twitter correspondence to their websites, and make it easy to share information and articles from websites on Twitter.