Los Angeles — In a fresh move to further expand its Certified Product program, micro-blogging outfit Twitter on Thursday gave its official blessing to another nine new companies to its Certified Products Program, adding to the 12 already given Twitter’s TCPP stamp of approval.
Last year, Twitter introduced a Certified Products Program, a sort of list of companies using Twitter data in approved ways. So now, Shoutlet, Adobe Social, Percolate, and others can keep selling their Twitter services without fear of being shut down.
However, today, the micro-blogging company said that it separated those companies into three sections including engagement, analytics and data resellers, and has appointed Zach Hofer-Shall as head of the program. He will be heading up the continued expansion of product certification and adding new categories to the three above.
Moving forward, the new group include companies in two of the program’s key verticals: Engagement and analytics. There are nine new partners with today’s announcement, including companies like Spredfast and Sprout Social, as well as Adobe Social and Percolate.
In short it means: The TCPP is basically Twitter’s way of saying, “Hey! We like what you are doing with our data. Here is a gold star.” Sorta like Facebook’s Preferred Developer Program.
But, otherwise it means , it is Twitter’s way of signaling to every other developer out there that this is the sort of stuff you should be doing with Twitter’s data. Helping businesses figure out how to make good tweets, or creating products that help with understanding the mess of data flowing through Twitter’s pipes on a minute-by-minute basis.
A list of new partners was announced today as well:
Especially, these restrictions is equally important for the entire ecosystem of folks who rely on Twitter’s data. After Twitter made it clear that it does not want developers creating third-party Twitter clients–like, say, Tweetbot–the company has been making an effort to guide developers in the “right” direction.
Not surprisingly, the Certified Products Program is more than just a marketing tool for these partners and for companies looking to use Twitter data more effectively, it is a signaling device used by Twitter to point developers at the kinds of products that it wants them to be building.