Interview with Kevin Makice – Author of “Twitter API: Up and Running”

Kevin Makice, a current Ph.D. student at the Indiana University School of Informatics – has authored a book revolving around Twitter.

Twitter API: Up and Running is a groundbreaking book sharing the expertise and skills necessary to develop web applications based on Twitter. It was released April 2nd, 2009 by O’Reilly Media, Inc.

Recently, Kevin kindly participated in the following interview – sharing with us his background in the internet industry, as well as interesting information regarding Twitter.

The Interview

You were the lead programmer/designer of TicketsNow.com, a successful brokerage for entertainment tickets. Would you tell us some about this experience?

For a while, it was a perfect gig. I was able to leverage my interest in web design with Cold Fusion and MS SQL programming I picked up while working at the Kelley School of Business to help develop several internet applications for the secondary ticket market. For a few years, I telecommuted back to my hometown (Woodstock, Illinois) from my new one (Bloomington, Indiana) and operated as the primary developer. At one point, however, I spent a month of intense, bonus-incentivized project work only to emerge with a longer to-do list than I started. The company started expanding, and those growing pains didn’t mesh well with what I wanted to do. I left the company in 2004 to go back to grad school.

Currently you’re pursuing a Ph.D. in Informatics – where do you plan on taking this degree?

Informatics is a very versatile degree. Our school is new, the first of its kind in the U.S., so we are only this year expecting to graduate our first doctoral students. I’m roughly on track for graduation in a year. The degree is equally applicable for academics or industry, relevant to a wide range of areas.

If I went into academia, there would be a short-list of quality schools—some of which are probably out of my grasp, given my CV—that I’d love to join. Alternatively, it would be great to find a new Informatics program that I could help build from the ground floor, like a startup. Industry has a number of research labs (Microsoft’s New England lab and HP Labs come to mind) where my research interests and skills could be a good match. I haven’t ruled out young companies, either, where I could apply what I’ve learned to some practical business problems. Whatever the opportunity, I hope the economy improves enough for me to be very picky about a good match of philosophy.

I’d love to stay in Bloomington, too. Earning a Nobel Prize might get me a position in my own program, but I’m not counting on that. My best bet to stay local would be to see more startup companies, like SproutBox, have a good year and create some meaningful research opportunities for me and my family.

When did you become involved in Computer Science – and what interested you? Did you expect from the start that you’d get involved in Informatics?

When I found the School of Informatics, I was just looking for a project management course that could give me some pedigree for my TicketsNow gig and move me into upper management in the growing company. I joined Informatics after a 90-minute conversation with Marty Siegel, a common story for most of the HCI recruits. He really is the one who sold me on the ideas Indiana University was trying to put forth with their design program. I never had formal CS training, having earned a physics degree in the pre-WWW era. Everything was self-taught, and even now I have a bit of an inferiority complex when it comes to coding. I can program, but my stronger skill is in bridging disciplines and communities as part of the design and development process.

Your new book, Twitter API: Up and Running, provides skills and resources for developers looking to build applications based on Twitter’s API. How did you go about deciding to write the book?

I got help. A professor at the School of Informatics, Jeff Bardzell, passed along contact to his agent, who had been asking for authors for a Twitter tech book. After much deliberation and revision of a proposal, I jumped into the experience with both feet. It cost me quite a bit of research time, but O’Reilly proved to be a great place to work. Most of that was due to my editor, Laurel Ruma, who made the process much less stressful than it could have been.

The 180-page book blew up into what it is now, mainly because I underestimated how much went into writing the technical details. The general audience for the book, which ranges from new programmers to those who are more skilled, was a challenge. I’m confident the first two chapters on Twitter culture and existing applications will be universally appealing. The chapters on the API methods and output will make a great reference for programmers. The rest of the book focuses on a narrow slice of the Twitter ecosystem: web applications using PHP and MySQL.

Where do you believe the future of Twitter and its applications will take us? Any new developments in the near future?

The past year might be summarized by networks and tools. Fall 2008, in particular, saw a boom of recommendation sites and metrics. This year, I’m expecting continued evolution of Twitter clients—Tweetie and Seesmic made some splashes recently—and a number of applications to emerge around profile and picture management. Twitter added new methods at the start of the year to allow for third-party developers to change profile data and images, but I haven’t see anyone take advantage of this opening yet. Another underdeveloped area involves Favorites, something I mention in the book. The structure of the current API doesn’t lend itself to answering the question, “Which of my tweets do other people like?” There are some third-party efforts to try and answer that in a meaningful way.

I don’t have much personal use for groups when it comes to consuming tweets, but I wish where was a great tool for managing the contact lists for the follow net. It isn’t very convenient to have to go to a web site to manage that. A desktop application or widget would appeal to me. DestroyTwitter has a mini-search for other users built in as you type, but I’d like something that helps me initiate interactions, rather than confirm Twitter handles.

Twitter’s Alex Payne recently gave a talk at Stanford in front of their HCI group. In that talk, which was about how to design APIs, Alex did hint that there would be some changes at the service end in how links are handled. I suspect they may be looking into managing their own short-url service for web pages and media. I hope they don’t try to do too much, though, and instead keep Twitter simple and the API robust.

One thing I feel strongly needs to remain a website-only interaction is account signup. As long as people have to go to Twitter first to register an account, the battle against spam is winnable. More importantly, Twitter is a process. People who start out with 1000 follows before their first tweet are losing out on a lot of important learning about the medium. Start slow, learn as you go, and grow later.

What’s your favorite Twitter application for desktops and/or mobile devices. Currently I’m very fond of TweetDeck.

I work mainly from a laptop, so TweetDeck is a bit of a hog both for resources and screen real estate. I prefer to keep Twitter simple with a single stream and one identity. The group feature is in great demand, but that complicates Twitter for me and increases the cognitive load. I don’t want tweets to become an email inbox. It’s possible I’d think differently with a big monitor and a desk.

The phone I have is an Android, so the selection for mobile apps isn’t as sexy as with the iPhone (yet). My favorite client is TwitterRide, which does some nice things like highlight new content and integrate with TwitPic. Twindroid, my first choice, crashed too frequently. I never incorporated pictures into my Twitter stream until I got a smartphone, where I can just click the picture and include it as part of my twittering. It is a lot more involved to get a photo from my camera through my laptop to Twitter.

My favorite third-party application, though, is TwitScoop. There really isn’t anything quite like it, even after a year from launch. What I love most about TwitScoop is how they use the medium they are analyzing. I get a lot of my news through @twitscoop posts as they look at the trending data. For the desktop, I keep trying to find a reason to leave Twitterrific for something more sexy, but in the end the simplicity, reliability and ambient qualities of that tool keep winning me back. I use it for my @kmakice account and other clients for some of the other accounts I maintain.

Also, since signing up to use Topify, I don’t visit the main Twitter web site much anymore. It definitely isn’t a first choice for posting. When I do go to the website, I am ever thankful for the Power Twitter browser extension. It resolves urls, shows media, adds some navigation, and a contextual search. That’s a great way to augment what Twitter is already offering.

In what ways do you believe Twitter can benefit bloggers?

My blogging this past year has been too infrequent to give much of a credible voice to this question, but I blame two 9-month projects—a book and a baby—for sucking all my time and energy away. I continue to Twitter and blog less, but that isn’t a causal relationship.

Blogs are very good at flushing out ideas in a way you simply can’t in 140 characters. However, Twitter is exceptional at testing ideas, externalizing thoughts, and reflecting on activity. I have noticed that I often go look on my Twitter timeline for recent links of interest because I remember posting a tweet about it. I use LoudTwitter and WordPress to keep a daily journal of my own tweets (http://makicetweets.wordpress.com/), and—although it has been a little sketchy for me lately—Twistory to situate my tweets on my iCal calendar. Those are great ways to look back on your past content and find patterns or recall topics of interest. In that sense, Twitter is great blog fodder.

Twitter is more about community and connection that it is content, of course, so tweets can be a means to a stronger blog community, too. Information spreads more rapidly through Twitter than other topical communities, like Technorati, so there are a lot of relevant and interested eyes that may find your way to your blog as a result of sharing a link.

My wife and I have long included a WordPress plug-in that displays just the most recent tweet from each of our streams. Even with integration with Facebook and more friends following our lives there, we still have people who still come to our blog just to check our Twitter update.

About the Author

Kevin Makice is currently a Ph.D. student at the Indiana University School of Informatics, the first such doctoral program in the nation. His research interests center around local use of technology and the application of relational psychology to complexity and design. Prior to completing his Masters of Science in Human-Computer Interaction in 2006, Kevin was the primary Internet programmer for TicketsNow, a clearinghouse for sports, theatre, and entertainment tickets available in the secondary market. Along with three others, he won the CHI 2005 student competition by designing a concept for ad-hoc volunteering system for elderly residents in assisted-living centers. Past research includes political wikis, tangible interfaces for children’s games, machinima, and network analysis of ball movement in basketball. Much of his blogging and academic efforts over the past year has focused on exploring Twitter as a means of community building.

BlogSchmog.net – Kevin’s personal blog.