Twitter’s CEO apologizes to its developers

Twitter’s Permanent Chief Executive, Jack Dorsey apologized to the developers who work with the social media company to create apps at Twitter’s annual Flight developer conference in San Francisco.

“We want to come to you today and first and foremost apologize for our confusion,” Dorsey said onstage. “We want to reset our relationship and we want to make sure that we are learning, that we are listening, and that we are rebooting.” Dorsey made sure to mention some of the company’s missteps, like shutting off access to the group of websites known as Politwoops that archived politicians’ deleted tweets. “Twitter stands for speaking truth to power,” Dorsey added.

Dorsey says that Twitter has a lot of work to rebuild the relationship with the software community, which it’s soiled by acting in unpredictable fashion, shutting off access to its platform, and ignoring the fact that developers made the service what it is today.

According to Reuters, One key to the effort at Twitter is to work more closely with developers who use software tools from the company to create their own apps, and Dorsey’s apology appeared to be an attempt to set a new tone with them.

He also needs to increase the company’s revenue from ads and promoted tweets. At Wednesday’s event the company appealed to potential advertisers by highlighting Twitter’s ability to determine what people are talking about in any given moment, such as a major news event.

As part of that effort, Chris Moody, the company’s vice president of data strategy, announced two new software tools that should provide deeper insights into how the audience on Twitter is responding to an event and how engaged users are.

At the event, the company also described some of the tools developers have access to in order to see who is using their apps, which Twitter said can help programmers improve their products.