Twitter will stop providing free access to the Twitter API on February 9 and instead will release a paid version as the mini-blogging platform owned by Elon Musk tries new ways to profit from the platform.
The Twitter Developer account announced in several tweets that the company will be discontinuing assistance for both the legacy v1.1 as well as the latest v2 Twitter APIs. It did not say how much it intends to begin charging for API usage right away.
Image Source: cnbc.com
The change comes after Twitter suddenly changed the conditions of its API over the past weeks, the API seems to have been used by many famous Twitter service users, including Tweetbot and Twitterrific. The majority of third-party Twitter applications have discontinued their mobile apps.
“Twitter data are among the world’s most powerful data sets. We’re committed to enabling fast & comprehensive access so you can continue to build with us,” the Twitter Dev account said Thursday. “Over the years, hundreds of millions of people have sent over a trillion Tweets, with billions more every week.”
Source: techcrunch.com
In light of recent modifications which saw Twitter shutter third-party customers, several other application developers became wary of how they progressed development atop the Twitter API. This new change may force some devs to give up their brands or pass the expense on to their consumers.
Large numbers of developers use the Twitter API for a variety of purposes, including monitoring Twitter accounts and providing alerts. These are enjoyable side projects for those who are unwilling to pay service charges for something which they are not monetizing.
Then there’s yet another type of Twitter API user, the researchers. Twitter’s latest revelation could have an influence on research in a wide range of sectors, such as hateful speech and online harassment.
Academic institutions frequently use Twitter to understand human behavior in various regions. Limiting free API usage could also deter companies from developing methods to detect the dissemination of false information on Twitter.
Ever since its founding, Twitter has had an odd relationship with developers. But, even though there was an inconvenience, both parties benefitted from the relationship.
Third-party companies were frequently the ones releasing new services and features for Twitter, and the social media platform helped by not charging people for API usage.
Twitter has even aimed to improve relationships with developers in recent times by introducing new programs such as the Twitter toolkit for app discovery. Several of these initiatives have been halted under the new administration.
I am a student pursuing my bachelor’s in information technology. I have a interest in writing so, I am working a freelance content writer because I enjoy writing. I also write poetries. I believe in the quote by anne frank “paper has more patience than person
Twilio is a renowned platform as a service, providing cloud communication services to its worldwide customers. The company is situated in San Francisco, California, U.S., and is mainly known for its web service APIs that allow web developers to add Twilio’s voice and communication service to their software.
Twilio makes use of the Amazon Web Services to run its communication system, such that establishes a connection between HTTP and the public switched telephone network (PSTN) using its APIs. The company is one of the biggest promoters of the open-source community and has made a few open-source software for developers, including OpenVBX.
Jeff Lawson, along with Evan Cooke and John Wolthuis, founded Twilio in 2008. Jeff Lawson is the CEO and the main brains behind the founding of Twilio. He used to work at Amazon Web Services and founded his passion in cloud computing. His passion became the basis of Twilio, and today Twilio is not just an idea but a company worth $63 Billion market capital.
Image source: vectorlogoseek.com
Back StoryOf Twilio
Jeff Lawson, Evan Cooke, and John Wolthuis founded Twilio in
2008, keeping the customer experience in mind. While working at multiple
software companies, the three founders had realized that they could achieve
anything through coding and the customer experience has to be the basis of
their company.
The founders went to multiple investors with the proposal to
build the company that would develop APIs for communication, many liked the
idea, but looking at the risk, they refused to pay the money. In the end, the
three of them collected their savings and started the company. They did not
even take their salaries for a few months. In fact, Lawson and his wife sold
all their wedding gifts to raise the money for their startup.
The startup started from two locations initially, i.e.
from Seattle, Washington, and San
Francisco, California. Twilio made its first software for rickrolling, an
American prank platform. The software brought a lot of press attention to
Twilio. Later, the company launched a cloud-based calling and messaging API,
named Twilio Voice in November 2008. The API was the first of its kind. Later
in 2010, the company also brought a text messaging API followed by the launch
of SMS shortcodes ( in public beta) in July 2017.
In 2009, Company raised a sum of $250,000 in its seed funding, Mitch Kapor, The Founders Fund, and Dave McClure being a few of the major investors. In its first round of funding, the company raised $3.7 million, where Union Square led the funding. In its round B of Funding, Twilio managed to raise around $12 million, followed by $17 million in a Series C round in 2011. Bessemer Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Fidelity, T Rowe Price, Altimeter Capital Management, Arrowpoint Partners have been some of the leading investors in Twilio.
The Growth
Twilio went public in 2016 on New York Stock Exchange, with a 92% increase on the first day of its trading. In September 2010, Twilio started the Fund to encourage startups and provide them seed money. In the last decade, the company has also made some major acquisitions, including Authy (2015), Tikal Technologies (2016), Beepsend (2017), Ytica (2018), SendGrid (2018), Core Network Dynamics GmbH (2018), Electric Imp (2020), Segment (2020), and Zipwhip (2021), etc.
The company today employs around 4,500 people worldwide. As per the 2020 records, Company made profits worth US$1.76 billion. The company started from voice API and today develops products including SMS, MMS, SIP Trunking, WebRTC, 2FA, Call Center, etc. SendGrid is one of its subsidiaries.
About the Founder
Jeff Lawson is a famous entrepreneur and software developer, well known for founding and leading Twilio. Apart from Twilio, he founded Nine Star Inc, Stubhub.com, and Versity.com Inc. Lawson joined the University of Michigan to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science but dropped out to concentrate on a business, which he started while studying at the university. Before founding Twilio, he also worked at Amazon (AWS) as the Technical Product Manager. Lawson has also written a book named Ask Your Developer.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
One of the leading technologies to have burst into the scene in recent years is none other than API. Over the past decade, it has proven itself to be a defining and driving force in the IT industry. The API framework allows the software to access other software to perform a particular function or collect data.
Since their inception, API has been helping scientists transform the way applications work and communicate with each other. The growth API’s fueled was so high that a single core API structure helped Twilio and Stripe reach billion-dollar valuations. These frameworks now act as the backbone for several applications we use on a daily basis. Here’s a look at a software company that used API to grow, evolve and attract the attention of some of the biggest names in the tech industry.
What Apigee
Does
Apigee is a software company that focuses on providing services related to predictive and analytical functions. The company, founded by Indian origin entrepreneurs Raj Singh and Ravi Chandra relied on API to run processes and work on data. The API development done by Apigee has helped to make communication between devices easier and more efficient. The company provides services including the creation, management, and handling of API proxies. Most of Apigee’s revenues come from subscriptions who run their analytics on the API management platform and a part of it is generated via professional services rendered to customers. Some of the added premium features the company provides is the ability to monetize APIs, traffic isolation, PCI-DSS compliance, and multi-region deployment.
About the Founders
Co-founder Raj
Singh is a serial entrepreneur who has a string of successful
start-ups behind him. He is the brain behind the jackpot start-up
Fiberlane and also the venture capitalist firm Redwood Venture
Partners. Ravi Chanda meanwhile, joined Sonoa as the COO. Prior to
working for Apigee, he served as the VP of Engineering at Redback,
and the company’s VP of Product Management and Engineering, Kishore
Seshadri and Ravi Krishna respectively, are ex-Redback employees. The
team is rounded up by CTO Vikas Deolaliker, whose impressive resume
includes a stint at Sun Microsystems Inc.
Image Source – Google
Raj Singh hails from Meerut, and did his Electrical Engineering from Roorkee, before joining the Navy. He worked on INS Vikrant but found the work to be boring and so left, taking up a Masters in computer science from IIT Delhi. He followed this up by joining the University of Minnesota for an MS in computer science. Between 1981 and 1995 Raj worked for CDC, National Semiconductors, Trilogy Systems, Cirrus Logic, and Inter HDL. Then he ventured into his first startup Advancel Logic, which later became Fiberlane and Stratum One.
Raj’s
Multiple Efforts
Singh led InterHDL, which worked on EDA tools for chip design, and sold it to Avant. Next, he found, Advancel Logic which went with Noise Cancellation Technologies. Raj Singh founded Fiberlane in 1996, which he then split into three parts; Cerent, Siara, and Cyras. Out of these, he sold Cerent to Cisco for $7 billion, Siara, meanwhile went to Redback for $4 billion, Cyras was taken up by the Ciena Corp. for $2 billion. He then left the company to form StratumOne, a company that built semi-conductor chips. This company as well went away to Cisco, and we are only half-way done at this point!
Following this, he created Roshnee, which split in two pieces: Inara Networks and Optovation. He then switched over to Corona Networks and worked as a CEO there before leaving to reenter the chip market. Singh and Raj Parekh took over RealChip, and steered it towards success, before unloading and moving on with other interests.
Founding
Apigee
The company started out as an XML processing software-based company, working on semiconductors. The markup language was an industry favorite when it comes to operations such as transaction processing. Furthermore, most router companies used XML to switch and route traffic on their systems, in place of Ethernet and Internet Protocol.
Accelerator microchips were adept at language processing help in processing XML and HTML. Some of the early players in this field were Xambala and XaQti. It is interesting to note that Singh was an investor in Xambala, way back in 2001, indicating how interested he is in the industry. Though Sonoa started out with building such chips and engaging in research in this field, it soon changed verticals.
Sonoa Systems began as a project in Santa Clara, California, in 2004. Two years later, the company brought in Chet Kapoor to run its operations as CEO. Though initially, the company worked on creating routers for SOA governance, their priorities quickly changed. Soon enough, the company branched into cloud computing and building application platforms.
They launched a Beta version of Apigee in 2009 giving users a platform to runs their analytics. A year later, the company switched names Apigee and began functioning as an API Management platform. Soon enough the initial application came out with several premium featured added to it.
Success and
Subsequent IPO
The platform was an instant success, and soon enough attracted big-shots such as Netflix and Walgreens. In 2012 Apigee acquired Usergrid which works on Mobile API applications, and in 2014, they acquired InsightsOne, which primarily works on Predictive Analysis. The company went public in 2015, raising $87 million via its IPO on NASDAQ. Apigee along with SmartBear and IBM, after receiving backing by Linux, founded the OpenAPI initiative. In September 2016 Google acquired Apigee for $625 million in 2016, owing to the phenomenal work they were doing in the API market.
Apigee grew in a
stellar fashion with several high-profile clients including 20 of the
Fortune 100 companies. They have a presence in over 30 countries,
making over $52.7 million in 2014. The company initially raised $173
million with the help of investors like Vilicus Ventures and Juniper
Networks. The IPO gifted them another $87 million, by selling 5.1
million shares at $17 per share at a valuation of $409 million.
This stellar growth and acquisition prove how the entrepreneurial spirit thrives in spite of everything. A simple man from Meerut changed the face of the chip industry, and the world is better due to it. It will be interesting to see what Raj has up his sleeves next!
Being a cinephile with a love for all things outdoorsy, Athulya never misses a chance to chase inspiring stories or poke fun at things, even when the subject is herself. Currently pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering, she is someone innately interested in technical and scientific research. Music reviews and op-eds define her as they allow her to explore different perspectives. Though sometimes she thinks she makes more sense playing the guitar than she does while writing.
