Twitter eyes country's massive developer base with Fabric

Country has an estimated 450,000 developers, only second to America

India is not an important market for Twitter only because of its massive user base but also because of its huge pool of Android developers.

With the country seeing huge adoption of smartphones, the 10-year-old micro blogging platform is seen aggressively pushing Fabric, its tool kit for developing mobile apps. India has an estimated 450,000 developers, only second to America.

“The Indian market for developers is amazing,” said Rich Paret, global head of developer platforms at Twitter. “India will become number one in a couple of years for sure. With a growing number of smartphone users outside urban areas, developers need to ensure they provide a user-friendly experience for the first-time users, and Fabric provides them that base.”

Towards the end of 2014, the San Francisco-headquartered company had launched its Fabric Platform, which looked to address some of the common problems faced by app developers.

Using Fabric, developers would be able to track crash analytics, easily post ads and promotions on Twitter and authenticate their users through a Twitter sign-in.

Started in 2006, Twitter is estimated to have around 320 million monthly active users globally. Around 17 per cent of its global users are believed to be located in India and the number is growing fast, with the proliferation of smartphones powered by internet connectivity.

With eyes of roping in the developer system in India, Twitter in April is holding its annual 'Hello World' developer conference out of Bengaluru. Paret says this would provide an opportunity for those building apps to learn from Twitter about all the technologies that are going to help them do so.  

“They can hear about local success stories and interact with other people who are building great apps using Twitter tools.”

ABOUT FABRIC

• Fabric is a developer platform comprising modular tool kits
   
• Using the tools, app developers can look at addressing issues like stability, distribution, revenues and user authentication
   
• The crash analytics app, embedded in the platform, helps to trace the exact code during a crash, to fix it real time
   
• With India housing the world’s second largest Android developer base, Twitter is looking at pushing the platform into the country