How do third party social media clients like tweetbot work?
In: Technology
Lots of services like twitter, reddit, youtube, etc offer APIs (Application Programming Interface) for developers to use. APIs are basically a set of tools that are provided to use a service’s features. Developers use the API and read about what it can do, and then code their own apps around it with different UIs or added functionality. That’s how apps like tweetbot, apollo, or any other 3rd party client works.
For example Tweetbot. The Tweetbot developers use Twitter’s API to get raw data they need for their app (tweet text, tweet likes, replies, tweet images, followed list, follower list, etc). Then they add extra features themselves to provide value that is not found on the regular twitter app.
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