We've taken the first steps toward introducing versioning into the Twitter REST API. With a versioned API we can make ambitious improvements *today*, not tomorrow, without worrying about breaking backwards compatibility. This will lead to both a better and more reliable API.
Available right now, the API's new home is at http://api.twitter.com. Currently only one version is supported: version 1 :-) Version 1 should be in all ways functionally equivalent to the API you're using at the main twitter.com url (if you find what seems like an incompatibility please submit what you've found on our issue tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list). To make a request with the new versioned API, you just need to prefix every path with the desired version. For now that's just 1. So for example, what was http://twitter.com/users/show/noradio.xml becomes http://api.twitter.com/1/users/show/noradio.xml For now we're keeping it simple. No subversions, no implicit version defaults, no fancy-pants etc. We're leaving our approach open to these types of additions, but we aren't going to support them until we feel a compelling need to. We haven't yet determined how many versions will be supported at once or how long a version will continue to be supported once it's deprecated. We'll be figuring out answers to these questions once we spend some time supporting multiple versions and seeing how new APIs emerge and iterate. We suspect though that we'll support deprecated versions for at least 6 months. We also don't have a hard date for when API requests to http://twitter.com will no longer be serviced. We aren't planning on pulling the rug out from anyone though. Please update your applications to the new http://api.twitter.com/1 at your soonest convenience. The non API urls likely won't be supported forever. Though having a versioned API should greatly decrease the likelihood that a change in the API breaks your application, one of the notable exceptions is bug fixes. When bugs are discovered they will be fixed and backported immediately to all supported versions of the API. We're kicking the tires on http://api.twitter.com/1 but we hope to have http://api.twitter.com/2 close around the corner. The time has come for us to start knocking off some of the stuff on V2 Roadmap list http://apiwiki.twitter.com/V2-Roadmap. For a while that page has been the dumping ground for all our lofty dreams. Version 2 probably won't be so ambitious that it resolves everything on that list. We want, after all, to get good at managing a multi-version environment before we get all crazy with the nitrous injections and chrome detailing. But we're putting the framework in place that will allow us to more quickly fix the stuff you've struggling with, take chances without putting your work in jeopardy, and all other things that are good. Cheers. -- Marcel Molina Twitter Platform Team http://twitter.com/noradio