I want to describe a proposal about using Twitter from applications. I guess this idea is not new, and that there are some real implementations in twittersphere. My point is to describe something simple and extensible.
Suppose you want to operate in a virtual marketplace. Actually, you are going to a website, enter your offer, wait for replies. An alternative method could be to use a Twitter account to send offer messages.
Something like this:
Every other application could read the feed from @ajmarket and then take action: response, make a counteroffer, publish it in a website, do market analysis, etc.
I propose a message format:
If you need to send more information, you can add links to data (possibly in JSON format, ok, it could be XML, but I prefer JSON):
Each application should define the valid verbs and arguments. The application that reads the messages (or write new ones) can be distributed, no need to have a entry point, in a URL. Twitter account is the more flexible entry point for such kind of applications.
Imagine you can build anything that involves many applications sending messages to possible many applications.
Even more: each application twitter account could be viewed as an agent. If you need to plan a trip, an “intelligent” application could be listen on Twitter, and take conversations with other Twitter agents to resolve your plan or problem.
The underlying application could run in Azure, Amazon, your own center. You can switch or support other message transport, Yammer instead of Twitter, or anything alike in the future.
Abstract: use Twitter as a pubsub channel, with a simple but flexible message format.
It should be something like this out there.
Keep tuned!
Angel “Java” Lopez
http://www.ajlopez.com
http://twitter.com/ajlopez
