Programming Twitter at 4AM

Friday, March 16, 2007 by Dave Winer.

I guess the next step in my exploration is to program a simple app that uses the Twitter API. And just like the old days, in the 70s, I'm up in the middle of the night because that's when the system is fast enough to actually get some work done.  

During the day, Twitter is very slow. As a user this is somewhat workable, but if you're developing an app, it's excruciating. And it's possible that my app might not function at all when the system is overloaded. I'm feeling this stuff out. Any help from someone experienced at developing on Twitter would be much appreciated.  

Okay, I don't want to announce what I'm trying to create, because I might not be able to get it to work, and then there will be users who will be disappointed when I turn the thing off (that never really worked). But in general, it's a newsbot. I'm sure a lot of other people are doing these, it's kind of an obvious thing to try, right? 

Anyway, I'm wondering if Twitter keeps you from posting too frequently and if so, what's the maximum rate you can post? I'm finding that after doing some work, the connection closes as I'm waiting for a response. It could be that I'm being throttled, or it could be that the server is having problems even in the middle of the night, even when the web UI is fast.  

If you have any insight, please post a comment.