By Jose Valles

On September 21st Twitter announced the launch of picture upload via MMS in the UK. This is a deceptively simple but powerful and very convenient new feature of Twitter, as it allows you to tweet images and access them from a broader range of phones and in areas with less mobile coverage. It's a move beyond the smartphone and beyond good 'signal strength' for multimedia social media.

This is also significant day for us, the BlueVia team, for all those in Telefonica and the telco industry championing the power of APIs. Because Twitter has begun using the BlueVia APIs.

We all love Twitter here. We love what it enables us to do and what it stands for. We love how the mainstream ubiquity of Twitter has enabled it to reach its potential of enabling us to share our memories, passions and feelings about anything, anywhere.

Being part of the Twitter MMS news brings back memories of the first mobile explosion for me - the launch of SMS. Memories of when we the telcos all of a sudden became the enablers of a new way of connecting people. It was emotional!

But let's be clear, it's exciting being a key cog in the machine, but BlueVia APIs aren't the make-or-break for a brand like Twitter. Our friends at other operators are also part of that machine. Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile... they are all also facilitating this service to their customers. How were the Twitter telco deals done? Simple, someone in Twitter picks up the phone, calls the telcos, explains the service and asks for access to the MMSC through an MM7. Deal done. That is the typical method that companies interested in using our SMS or MMS services use.

So then, why does BlueVia go to all the effort of offering public APIs if doing a deal is so straightforward? It's all about making this all a universal right!

Yes, Twitter, Facebook, the Bank of Scotland, Tesco, Phonehouse, Louis Vuitton and a bunch of other companies are big and well-known enough to make that call and do the deal. But if you are an independent developer or a small software company, a startup in a suite in East Charleston Rd in Mountain View, try calling those telcos. Well, calling is possible but getting somebody interested in helping you at the other side of the phone is a totally different story. Telcos, like any other company, have limited bandwidth in terms of how many projects they can run in parallel. Scale is just not possible. And, no matter how cool the service is, probably they’ve never heard about you and will hang up as fast or fob you off.

So here is where it comes down to the API. By exposing public APIs, you don’t need to call, give explanations, make your pitch and suffer the rejection. It’s just a simple and plain http call and you are able to access to the service. Anybody, with a computer and the programming skills can, from any part of the world, connect to an API and utilize the service. And that's why we are so proud. Because with our API programme we are releasing the power of our network to anybody, to help them create all those services that until now where just available to those well known brands.

So, as I said, we are excited to be supporting such an engaging partner as Twitter. We love that we can help them grow their user community. For us, the BlueVia crew, this represents a key milestone because we have been able to road test our platform and APIs with a huge partner.

But most important to us, is this is a great message for all those out there that want to use these services and haven’t been able to until now. Other telcos should embrace the same philosophy of openness that Telefonica is accomplishing through BlueVia and release the power of their network through RESTfull APIs. This is not about competing but about making the ecosystem better. Developers, customers and telcos can benefit of all this.

About the author

Jose Valles is Telefonica's Director of Enabling Platforms & Developer Ecosystems, and runs Telefonica’s BlueVia initiative. Jose writes a blog called Glass Wall Climber, about innovation and change in the technology sector

About the company

BlueVia is the global developer platform from Telefonica that helps developers take apps, web services, and ideas to market.

https://bluevia.com/en/