Twitter BlackBerry Application UberTwitter increases user adoption, user satisfaction and engagement with Plixi API Integration

When Paul McDonald decided he wanted to make his Twitter application for BlackBerry phones more robust and engaging he started looking at the photo sharing options available to him as a developer. 

"These guys have a passion for their photo sharing platform that is evident by the way they are willing to embrace developers and help them with their product vision and execution." 

Paul is a Sr. Developer with 20+ years experience and he became frustrated by the Twitter app solutions that were available for BlackBerry devices. Most were very rudimentary and did not allow for the enhanced user experience he thought was possible. He decided to do something about it and started creating what he felt would be a very sophisticated and powerful twitter app for BlackBerry phones. This was his first mobile application that he has ever developed. 

What he soon found was that most photo sharing services had fairly limited APIs that merely facilitated uploading of images. For a period he actually had to develop his own photo sharing service but abandoned that idea after realizing challenges of image hosting and that developing a robust and expansive API for photo sharing was a monumental ongoing task best left to someone else. In his words, "I quickly learned that photo sharing platforms have many unique challenges and building something as robust with all the functionality that I wanted would be extremely asset intensive and be very expensive to code." 

But Paul had a greater vision for what he could create if he had access to a functionally robust photo sharing platform that allowed him to create a really cool and unique photo sharing experience for UberTwitter. He decided to do some research and see what his options would be for a real-time social photo sharing platform integration. He quickly discovered the Plixi platform and a smile came across his face as he quickly realized what he could do with the powerful API to realize his vision of developing a more engaging experience for his users. 

He wanted to create something that was close to the desktop experience as possible; and even more powerful from a seamless photo engagement experience perspective. Plixi was the clear choice for him to execute his vision. 

Paul created a richer and seamless social photo sharing and interaction experience for his users that allowed them to view photos in the app and not have to open a browser. He exposed immediately how many people viewed a photo. He also wanted to create more interaction around the photo so he integrated the voting, favoriting and commenting tools from the Plixi API. 

This allowed easy interaction as well as real time updates of the view and vote tallies so that users could see this information. That allows users to instantly see how many people were interacting around the photo which drove higher engagement and satisfaction. 

Five Reasons Paul Chose the Plixi API:

1. Simple and powerful REST API with many client libraries to speed up development
2. Makes app way more engaging with the functionality that lets users socialize around photos (voting, favoriting, sharing, commenting, view counts, vote counts, etc.)
3. Volume of features and API documentation
4. Robust, reliable and scalable infrastructure
5. The Plixi vision and supportive commitment to the developer community and ongoing release of new functionality

Paul launched UberTwitter on April 15, 2009 on Crackberry.com, and soon had nearly 200,000 installs of his application. He released the upgraded version with the Plixi API integration on Sept. 1. 

His users have been giving him some very positive feedback since the launch of the new version that included the Plixi integration, especially around the increased functionality and ease of interaction around photos. 

He saw an increase of 44% more photos uploaded with the fully integrates social photo sharing enhanced design. On average the images that were shared via his app had over 200% more interactions than photos uploaded from other developers' applications that did not allow easy interactions such as voting, favoriting and commenting. 

Paul's shared how his enthusiasm for the Plixi platform was cemented "The fact that Plixi really supported developers, quickly helped me and actually talked on the phone with me was truly amazing. These guys have a passion for their photo sharing platform that is evident by the way they are willing to embrace developers and help them with their product vision and execution. For example I needed chunked upload capabilities and they rolled that functionality out right after I suggested it to them." 

Paul also stated that "Plixi has a revenue program for developers that allowed my application to become monetized and provide substantial revenue for my business. This revenue program shows commitment to my business and rewards me financially which is very unique in the app development world". 

Looking at trends Paul shared "Moving beyond simple photo uploading and moving into a socially enabled and engaging photo experience is where the future is at; Plixi is on the cutting edge of facilitating that experience with their API toolsets. Other developers for apps can benefit from moving this way no matter if they are developing for iPhone, web, desktop or other environments." 

The number of photo images uploaded thru the UberTwitter application to the Plixi platform is currently over a million per month. You can download a copy of the UberTwitter app for your BlackBerry device or read more about Paul and UberTwitter.