Micro-blogging site Twitter has launched a set of software tools, with an eye to boost the mobile app developer base in India.
This set of software tools can help developers get insights into the apps that they are developing and also help them monetise, said Arvinder Gujral, Director — Business Development South and Southeast Asia at the Flock mobile developer conference.
Called Twitter Fabric, mobile app developers can develop, test, distribute and earn revenues by using Twitter’s software kits. This service is free of cost, company executives added.
Twitter’s latest move comes at a time when competitor Facebook is upping the ante to woo app developers in the country.
Twitter’s Fabric platform is made of three modular kits that address some of the most common challenges that all app developers face: stability, distribution, revenue and user authentication, company executives said.
For example, a company that has an app for e-commerce can find errors and fix bugs automatically by using Twitter's Crashlytics solution. “It helped us to have an app that did not require manual fixes and helped us to develop a stable app,” said Pankaj Chhaparwal, CEO of Cricbuzz.
Other features such as Digits and MoPub, help app developers distribute and monetise across Apple and Android smartphones. “Digits helps an app developer to sign-in using a phone number that verifies users through SMS without a password, skipping the usual complicated verification process,” explained Bear Douglas, Developer Advocacy at Twitter.
Paytm, the mobile wallet and commerce app, uses Crashlytics to generate reports by severity level and helps the company pinpoint the exact line in a file responsible for each crash.
“We used it to locate bugs and report crashes which has improved its app ranking on the Play and the App Store,” said Rishi Malhotra, co-founder, Saavn.
Start-up competitionFurther, Twitter has extended its start-up competition called Hatch wherein the winner will be awarded $25,000 for an app as one of the incentives to establish long-term relationships with them, according to Douglas.
Twitter, which has 302 million active users globally does not give out India specific numbers.