Twitter Unveils Plan For First Developer Conference

Developers and Twitter hackers, mark your calendars. The popular microblogging site has announced it will be hosting an official two-day developer conference, dubbed Chirp, in San Francisco in April.The conference day features keynote speeches by Twitter’s founders, including co-founders Biz Stone and CEO Ev Williams. Ryan Sarver, Twitter’s director of platform and COO Dick Costolo, are also slated to deliver remarks. Topics include Twitter’s authentication protocol, OAuth, streaming, geolocation and mobile integration strategies. “You’ll learn from the experts that keep Twitter’s heart beating,” the Eventbrite ticket site reads. The $469 ticket is good for admittance to the day-long conference as well as an all-night “hack day” that will run from 6 p.m. on Wednesday, April 14 to early evening on April 15. In addition to the opportunity to work with some of Twitter’s top developers, participants can expect to be ”fed and watered throughout.”Hack Day, which will be held at the Herbst Pavilion at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center, includes a pre-dinner inspirational talk and a group meal before hack-time commences at 9 p.m. At 11 p.m., attendees can learn “Effective use of the Streaming API,” and by 3 a.m., it’s on to search API. Before noon, there’s a session on OAuth implementation, and another on Twitter’s adoption of Cassandra, the second-generation distributed database. Nap-time? Not included. Free beer at afterparty? Included.The historic Palace of Fine Arts venue is lovely, but not large. Just 800 spots at the conference are available, to be released in rolling increments of 100. By mid-afternoon Monday, more than 100 had already been snatched up by developers, including the people behind Twittelator, an iPhone Twitter client, Twilk.com, HootSuite.com, ScoutLabs and JustBought.it. For those with a secret code (instructions below), sales are still on. Trendy @chirp tweets include the automated “I want to go to Chirp, the Official Twitter Developer Conference!” and designers online are already praising the conference site, hosted by Carsonified, for its elegant design and whimsy. A hidden page delivers irreverent directions on how to construct a “Magical Origami Chirp Bird.”For updates on sales and ticket releases, follow @chirp or text “follow chirp” to 40404 to receive text message updates. Or, to ensure a spot, simply equip yourself with a very easily hacked password (directions here) to enter to access the sales page (Pssst: a little bird told us it’s twitterapi).