Twitter announced that it will be opening up its data stream (otherwise known as the Firehose) in early 2010. This means the number of Twitter apps will skyrocket, and the potential for functionality in existing Twitter apps will be greatly increased. That means good things for developers, and most likely great things for Twitter.

Twitter reportedly made this and several other announcements at the Le Web event in France. Other announcements involved a new developer site that will be launching soon, an increased rate limit for services that use OAuth, an API for browser-less apps to be launched in 2010, and an official Twitter-hosted developer conference called Chirp.

The firehose would give developers access to the same spectrum of Twitter data that Google and Bing have access to, as Pete Cashmore points out. Twitter says there are already over 50,000 registered Twitter Apps so far. Imagine how many more will come out with such new possibilities made available.

You can probably expect a lot of new "coolness" from our own Twitter-app Twellow, once we get access to the firehose, Twellow’s lead developer Matthew Daines tells me.

The firehose will mean a lot more accurate and real-time functionality for a lot of Twitter-related applications. With this, Google launching real-time results from Twitter and other sources, and announcements from other important companies, we’re really going to be seeing the "real-time web" we’ve talked about so much start to truly take shape.

On a related note, Twitter also stressed that it wants to become more transparent and communicate better with developers. In addition, the company intends to announce a business model that will involve "sharing money and success" with partners. If you thought 2009 was the year of Twitter, it looks like things are really going to get interesting in 2010.

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