Paintstrokes on the Digital Canvas

In the past few weeks whenever I opened my browser the first link I would open was http://apiwiki.twitter.com/. Actually third, followed by my obsession with facebook and gmail. The link contains a fine description of what is called an API(Application Programming Interface) for Twitter. Almost anyone can understand the API through its documentation, but the only pain is that there are infinite pages describing each and every feature which some people may not want to go through. And its still in its first phase! Having gone through most of them I give here a brief version of all the methods(actions performed through the API). For details, ofcourse, one can visit the mentioned link.

The Twitter API is actually in three parts
1)Search
2)REST(literally)
3)Streaming

I have presented all the methods as cool looking mind maps. Just seperate the boxes with ‘/’ and you have the URL for the method.

1) Twitter Search API

All the search API methods are shown here.
All the results can be received in json format, except the general search which also supports ATOM.
In the general search, the maximum number of tweets that can be recieved are 1500, a maximum of 100 per page.
No authentication is required.

2) REST API

This includes all the methods that are generally used by a user,  like updating statuses, adding friends, etc etc. The methods which return results are recieved as both json and XML. Some of them also support ATOM and RSS.

The methods are self explainatory. Authentication is required. A user can authenticate by a valid twitter id.

3) Streaming API

The methods used to get runtime tweets & retweets come under streaming API. There are 4 methods: filter, firehose, retweet and sample.

• Filter requires basic authentication using a twitter id. There is a restriction on the number of keywords, 200, and the number of userids to be followed, 400 at the default access level to the twitter database. Further access requires special arrangement with twitter.
• Sample returns random tweets from the active stream and requires basic authentication.
• Firehose returns all public statuses and is not available with basic authentication & requires a special setup with twitter.
• Retweet returns all retweets and is not available with basic authentication & requires a special setup with twitter.

Again, all the results can be requested in JSON or XML format.

The Twitter API is still being developed and new features/more methods may be added later.
For updates, discussions or queries regarding the API go to their google group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk.

I hope this helps make things easier for those developing with the API.

About the author: Kaustubh is a second year student from IIT Bombay & interned with us for 2 weeks, in January. You can follow him on twitter on @kaustubhsinghal

There are a few open ends remaining in the above references. We would be more than happy to receive your suggestions, ideas & improvements on the reference. We will keep updating the mindmaps. Our website is being worked upon. Once it is done, you will find JPEGs for these in the Resources section, for you to save to your computer.

Development, Social Media, twitter, twitter API API, Reference, Twitter

Well, my Facebook activity level has only grown & matured over time, since I joined it. Spreading events & causes; sharing, commenting on & tagging photos & activities; writing a few notes; leveraging the status updates to help myself and my friends & extended network; and so much more.

Over this period, I have noticed one habit of Facebook, which apparently loads of you might have noticed.

One fine day every three or four months, the UI/UX team of Facebook suddenly gets into the action mode & decides to do a makeover of Facebook by implementing the ‘coolest’ UI/UX features they came up with.

I really appreciate your effort and commitment towards giving us an amazing experience, but give us a break and don’t shove it up our *** by abruptly changing the look and feel of Facebook. While surfing through Facebook lately, I noticed one feature of Facebook – viz. Friends Lists – that Facebook is killing with its own abrupt UI implementations.

Do you use Facebook Lists?

• Yes! I do :)
• No. I don't
• What's Facebook Lists? I dunno.
• Well. I never knew there was something called Facebook.

View Results

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I’m not sure how many Facebook users use Lists. But those who do, are really benefited by it, because it empowers them to organise their FB contacts.

[Update: In response to Harsh Lunani's comment on Facebook, I realised I need to demonstrate where actually the Facebook Lists feature is hidden! Their UI doesn't tell people about it! So below is a short update to the post.]

Facebook Requests Section

You  need to go to the Facebook Requests section on the right side of your Facebook homepage.

Facebook Lists

Here when you want to confirm people, you can add them to multiple lists! This feature is also available when you want to add friends.

Even before this subset of users recovered from the overhead of categorizing loads of our previous friends, whom we had added before the introduction of Facebook Lists, the new Facebook UI has a feature to retract us from leveraging the semantics of the feature.

We are talking about the very well integrated Friend Requests feature on the top bar of Facebook.

Facebook Friend Requests

This new UI element is very very handy and useful. But, it skips out on adding this new friend to a list. So, if I am a user of Facebook Lists, and I am particular about adding my friends to lists, then it is virtually of no use to me. And there is another set of users who are particular, but not always conscious about it. So, even if they started categorizing their friends earlier, they’re now missing out on doing that if they confirm their friends using this bar.

What do you think about this? Leave a comment or participate in our polls to give us some feedback.

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Facebook, Social Media, UI/UX, Usability Facebook, Usability

What's happening with the FB privacy settings? Click to see larger cartoon

This cartoon has been made after reading this, this and this. It has been made just for fun. But, I do have a few things on the serious side to add to it too

I totally stand with Sanjay’s viewpoint & perspective about the whole thing. He’s very practically drawn the analogies and there’s nothing more that can be added to it.

There’s a concern Mahesh has raised about large set of friends. Let me put it in a situation, totally within his perspective:

Mahesh has 4151 friends, as of now. He’ll definitely have his employees, his friends, his family, his relatives and so many more of his real & virtual contacts, all in his Facebook friends list, creating complex overlapping groups/networks of people.

Assuming, if he goes down to a booze party with 10 old friends. And wants to post photos/videos from that booze party and wants to share it with all these 10 people, 20 of his current close friends, and a couple of people here and there and doesn’t want to share it with anyone else.

I see it as a valid concern! The problem lies in the fact that a lot of users do not know that such a feature already exists on Facebook!!

Lets see it in images how, this can be achieved. I will demonstrate this by going into one of my photo albums on Facebook.

Since I want only a selected set of friends to see it, I go to Edit Info & select Customize... in the Privacy setting.

I first add my friend Pranshu to it.

Followed by this, I add a FB list I'm maintaining, viz. Community - Kolkata

I want all my Web Designer friends to see it. So I add my Web Designers FB list as well!

I want another of my friend, Ankita to be able to see it. So I add her as well. Followed by this, I just save these settings & voila!!

Whoa!! Whoa!! So I can add my Facebook lists here!! That makes it so cool & controllable!

Wait. There’s a problem. This is a problem which a lot of us have been facing & will face.

Facebook lists is  the amazing feature in concern here, which was introduced in the end of 2007.

A lot of people joined Facebook much earlier and already had a lot of friends on their list, some of them with the number of added friends large enough! Different people started using lists at different points in time. The result of this, is that come what may, even if we put in enough efforts to create lists out of our contacts, I’m sure there will be extremely few of you readers, who will have a `totally` updated and maintained set of Facebook lists!!

So, what it essentially boils down to is that we have the superpower of maintaining our privacy and share with full granularity, but we’ll have to sit down and categorize our contacts into lists. Trust me, though my categorized contacts are not completely managed, but to the certain extent that they are, it helps me a lot in certain situations, like inviting people to an event, or suggesting Fan Pages, etc. There can be various uses of maintaining these lists, just like the one demonstrated above!

So, from now on, whenever you add a friend, make sure you mark him on the relevant lists, right away!!

Other aspects of this topic are also open for discussion here! So, drop in your comments.

Cartoons, Facebook, Social Media Facebook, Facebook Lists, Facebook Privacy, Social Media