Official BlackBerry Twitter Client Coming November 16 with Push?
By Simon Sage on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 7:39 AM PST In Applications, BlackBerry, Rumors, Social Networking
There are a lot of options in the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) twitter app market these days, but the killer feature of real-time, push tweets is still missing, which apparently only RIM will be able to provide in the near future. Rumours of an official twitter client being in the works have surfaced alongside a feature list and a November 16 launch target.
- Notification of number of new tweets on the home screen with icon, like text messages
- Main app opens friends timeline
- Ability to view followers
- Follow/unfollow functions
- Create direct messages, replies and new tweets
- Keyword search and saved results
- Tweet photos directly from camera or memory card
- View photos from other tweets
- View trending topics
- Address book integration
Existing software can offer core functions and do some neat stuff with GPS, RIM’s ability to really leverage the push tech that they’re famous for will easily make this the best BlackBerry twitter client out there. The software will eventually come preloaded on all devices according to tipsters, in addition to being available through App World. The address book integration is a nice touch, and follows closely in the Facebook app’s footsteps. I trust the option to view @ replies and direct messages in your messages folder will be enabled, just like the instant messaging clients, but we’ll have to wait and cross our fingers.
[via BBNews, Salomondrin]
I just want to pick up on the “only RIM will be able to provide in the near future” bit. In theory at least, anyone could provide near real-time push delivery of tweets to a BlackBerry. To make this happen you would need only (a) a tweet hook on the Twitter side and (b) a delivery mechanism on the BlackBerry side. Both of these are more or less in place:
(a) RIM’s push infrastructure was opened up to 3rd party developers several months ago via the appropriately named push API. Anyone can now write a service that runs in the cloud and pushes notifications out to users whenever something interesting happens. Although I can’t vouch for it personally, it is apparently very easy to use, efficient and reliable.
(b) Twitter have a real-time streaming API in alpha test. Approved applications can invoke the ‘firehose’ method which returns a continuous stream of data representing every single tweet as it happens. There’s even a cursor so that you can continue where you left off in the event of being disconnected.
In practice however, I expect that Twitter aren’t going to give firehose access to anyone that asks nicely – this would serve only to make the spambots more efficient too! The firehose seems to me like a prime example of something Twitter may ultimately charge for.
There is also one little technical issue that I’m curious to know how RIM will address. If a user sets the ‘protect my updates’ account option, their Tweets are not available through the streaming API. It’s difficult to see therefore how RIM will deliver tweets from such users in near real-time. If they can pull off this trick it might raise privacy concerns as it would suggest that they had use of a back door API that bypasses the normal protections.
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Is there a name for this new client. I’m excited to hear more.
are there any updates on this? Is a mid-November release date still likely?
I started using bbtweet, a simple client. Recently loaded UberTwitter – a more powerful app.
It 16th Nov… where can i find it?
It still hasn’t been released. Keep checking BlackBerry App World. You’ll most likely find it as one of the featured apps as soon as its released.