Recently, Twitter announced it will open source portions of its code, making it available to the public in an effort to foster further open source development. Perhaps the most notable portion of the code that has been revealed is Twitter’s proprietary recommendation algorithm.
The revelation of the recommendation algorithm has been met with both praise and skepticism from the software development community. While some argue that the development team at Twitter has done their due diligence to put forth a competent and secure algorithm, others argue that with such a large and diverse pool of potential users, all potential weaknesses and vulnerabilities may not have been identified.
That being said, with such a widely-used algorithm revealed to the public, it could unearth potential ideas and concepts or help further develop areas in which the algorithm may be weak. Many industry leaders feel the open source nature of the code will lead to a much more robust and widely utilized algorithm that can be molded to various applications.
This unveiling of the recommendation algorithm is one of the first of its kind, as most tech giants have been very secretive in their software development. With more and more companies pushing open source development, the proprietary algorithms of major software companies may be the first to go.
Intwitter has once again pushed the trend of open source development further by releasing a portion of its code, including its recommendation algorithm. While many questions remain unanswered and the code’s robustness is yet to be proven, the open nature of the code releases open up new possibilities for the future of software development. We can only wait and see the exciting development projects this new openness lead to.
