Exploring latency in social network APIs : A pre-study of the effects latency has on usability and usage of social network APIs and their applications

With an increased use of social network APIs as authenti-cators for third party applications, the need for low latency solutions have grown rapidly. Much speaks for that the la-tency issues, that plague ecommerce and search, are also a problem for providers of social network APIs. These prob-lems affect usage and usability of both social networks and their APIs. These effects can be proved by social and tech-nological tests. There is a significant difference in latency among the most common social network APIs. Users have distinct preferences when it comes to what API they use. Factors, such as underlying technology and user numbers play a role in what API users choose to utilize. Although many other factors exist, the most prominent of these is la-tency. One of many possible solutions to the latency prob-lems is a wide geographical spread of servers.