Jeff Bennett's Blog

Twitter has taken the world by storm and really transformed one-to-many communication.  Twitter has allowed  you to inform your friends what you are doing.  Twitter has allowed traveling food trucks to let their loyal followers where they will set up shop.  Twitter has allowed teachers to connect to their students for collaborative projects.  Twitter has allowed first responders to emergencies, disasters and events to communicate what is happening with words and pictures.  In doing all of this and so much more Twitter has roared on the scene to serve an Internet audience of over 20 million in August according to comScore.

What I think is most fascinating about Twitter is the approach that the company has taken to enabling a community of applications built on the Twitter API.  The Twitter audience growth is impressive, but I believe the growth of an application community is even more impressive.  At this date there are thousands of applications that have been built on the Twitter API.  This is an impressive community of developers across the globe.  NameMedia is among this group with our TwittaScope application allowing us to syndicate personalized horoscope information through Twitter.   Many of these apps are free and a growing number of these apps are available for a small fee.

With the explosion of Twitter mobile apps, web-based clients, and desktop applications, it was only a matter of time before someone launched an actual Twitter-focused app store.  Oneforty has built a marketplace for basically all things Twitter, helping developers get their creations found and letting users access a centralized place to find and buy Twitter-based technologies. On launch, the site lists 1,332 free and paid applications and services built on Twitter’s API, where people can search for, rate and buy Twitter services. The site also features lists of the most popular apps on the marketplace, ad lists the “best” app for nine types of Twitter services, such as apps for business, url shortners, image sharing, news, and travel. The site also hopes to be somewhat of a social network, with users having the ability to create profiles of their favorite Twitter apps and services.

I was first introduced to Oneforty this past May when I became involved with Tech Stars in Boston as a mentor, the super cool boot camp/incubator.  Oneforty was one of nine companies that was part of TechStars this Summer in Boston.  I was impressed with founder Laura Fitton’s energy, passion and knowledge of Twitter.   Laura is the author of “Twitter For Dummies.” It was great to work with her this summer as part of TechStars.  I was not the only person impressed as Laura was able to raise an initial round of capital early this summer.  Oneforty has taken shape fast and at the conclusion of the TechStars program the company was lauded as “Best Position To Be In” due to its early funding and upcoming product launch.

Congrats to Laura and the Oneforty team on todays milestone.