While there are people of all ages who've managed to live life without tweeting, Twitter is releasing a new application framework that will enable developers to weave the social network's software into the fabric of most any mobile app.
Announced at Twitter's developer's conference, the Fabric framework is designed to be a platform app developers can use to tailor software to fit an organization's finances and subscriber base. The Fabric framework was built on top of Twitter's mobile application programming interface.
Developers can use the Fabric software development kit to patch tweeting and other Twitter hallmarks into their apps, but the framework was designed to be both open and powerful enough to facilitate the development of apps that have nothing to do with social networking. For example, a developer can use Twitter's Crashlytics to track crashes in his or her app throughout development or leverage the social network's advertising platform.
"We wanted to approach this not from the perspective of what would best for Twitter, but from the perspective of what would make you the most productive," says Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.
While widespread adoption of Fabric would provide a new revenue stream for Twitter, Costolo asserts his new framework is paved with different intentions. He says it's about standardizing the future of mobile app development.
"It's not a departure so much as moving beyond Twitter the product and moving into Twitter the company and the platform," says Costolo. "It's about helping define the future of the mobile landscape and building an application developer's platform for the future."
Echoing Costolo's sentiments in calling Fabric a leap in the evolution of "Twitter the company," Kevin Weil, head of Twitter's business products and Fabric, indicates the nature of Twitter created the perfect conditions for a new framework to take legs and walk upright.
"It's Twitter becoming more of a mobile services company," says Weil. "This is us stepping in to play a more powerful role in the mobile ecosystem, based on what we've learned from being a mobile-first company for the last seven years. If we achieve our goals with Fabric it will be the first thing developers include when they write their apps."
Recently, Twitter has been experimenting with myriad ways to deliver its core service. While some changes to its timeline upset many users, the social networking site has stood by each of its decisions to experiment and deemed the testing a necessity for creating a better product.
As Twitter the company continues to expand beyond it social site and app, Costolo's company will likely increase the frequency at which it calls developers to conferences.
"For them to have this developer conference is more evidence that Twitter wants to be viewed as a top-level consumer service," says Gartner analyst Brian Blau.
