Twitter Annotations are the next big feature a lot of people are excited about. With them, both users and clients will be able to add more context to tweets, which should make for a richer experience (and more useful data). A new post today in the Twitter API Announcement Google Group indicates that testing of Annotations will beging as early as next week.
To be clear, this is just a test of the feature through the API, and it will not yet be available to users. On June 7 through June 11, Twitter plans to flip the switch on some sample Annotation-enabled tweets in the Streaming API. Clients using this API should start to see tweets with these payloads appear. Some will be populated with sample Annotation data, some won’t be, Twitter’s John Kalucki writes.
“Assuming general stability, on our end and yours, we’ll eventually leave annotation delivery turned permanently on,” Kalucki notes.
Twitter recently updated that Annotations Overview wiki page with some more information about what you can expect from the feature. Of note, Twitter has listed 11 “recommended” types of Annotations so that people can get started using them. Those are:
- webpage
- review
- song
- movie
- tvshow
- book
- product
- stock
- offer
- topic
- event
Also worth noting is that Annotations will be limited to 512 bytes initially (though Twitter hopes to increase that limit over time).
This past weekend, Twitter held a Annotations Hackfest at their headquarters. Here’s one account of the event.
