A few weeks ago, Michael Sippey of Twitter wrote a blog post on the Twitter developer’s blog which was widely seen to foreshadow the end of Twitter’s relationship with LinkedIn, and has left developers concerned for future restrictions of the Twitter application programming interface (API). I think I’ve found a third party solution to allay developer concerns.

Smule is the company behind “I Am T-Pain” (I used to send freestyle raps to my wife every day on my commute home until she deliberately deleted the app from my phone).  They just released a new app on iOS and Android called simply “Autorap,” and it is a phenomenal treatment of a great idea.  The premise of the app is that a user can say whatever they want into the app and it will be magically transformed into a syncopated, percussive, auto-tuned rap song.

I downloaded Autorap to give it the ultimate challenge.  #1 – could Autorap make ME believably sound like a rapper and #2 – could Autorap make something entirely uncool sound kind of cool?  I chose Sippey’s blog post for the test material.  Here is the text of the first paragraphs of his post:

“Just over two weeks ago, I talked about more interactive experiences within expanded Tweets and how easy it is for users to discover even more great content on Twitter. The technology behind expanded Tweets – Twitter cards – gives developers and publishers a way to tell richer stories on Twitter, directly within Tweets and drive traffic back to their sites. Since launch, we’ve seen great engagement and more than doubled the number of partners that are part of expanded Tweets, and we continue to add more.

Twitter cards are an important step toward where we are heading with our platform, which involves creating new opportunities to build engaging experiences into Twitter. That is, we want developers to be able to build applications that run within Tweets. Just a few days ago, our CEO Dick Costolo said, “What you’ll see us do more and more as a platform is allow third parties to build into Twitter.” This is something we’ve been talking about for a while, and we’re looking forward to adding new ways for developers to do this.”

As always, we’re hard at work building tools that make it easy for developers to build common Twitter features into their own sites in a simple and consistent way. Some examples of these tools include the Tweet Button, Follow Button, embeddable Tweets and the search widget.

Here is Autorap’s treatment of my reading:

Autorap is available for iPhone and Android.

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Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is “social media research,” I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred’s 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout’s most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven’t entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

@jimdougherty

Writer about social media and tech at Leaders West, I also tweet as @leaderswest.

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