Since we launched BackType Connect, we’ve seen a growing demand for our API. We serve millions of requests every single day through our free (limited to 1,000 daily requests) and commercial API. Here are just some of the companies using our API to do interesting things:

Disqus Comments is a comment system that powers hundreds of thousands of sites. They use BackType’s API to retrieve "social reactions" from across the web to display alongside comments.

Kosmix helps people explore the web by topic, presenting a dashboard of relevent videos, photos, news, commentary and more. They use BackType’s API to retrieve relevant commentary.

PostRank Analytics helps publishers track their social engagement. They use BackType’s API to retrieve conversations related to publisher content.

Wibiya enables blogs to integrate the most exciting services, applications and widgets of their choice into their blog through customized web-based toolbars. They use BackType’s API to power Twitter-related services for publishers.

Please let us know how you’re using our API in the comments

If you’re wondering what it’s like to work for a fast growing start-up in Silicon Valley, this is a great opportunity – one we wish we had while we were undergrads at the University of Toronto. You’ll be building real tech, deploying code rapidly, making a significant impact on the company and the millions of people that use our products and services.

We strongly prefer entrepreneurial candidates that are interested in tackling challenging technical problems.

Role & Responsibilities

• Immediately make large contributions to our technology
• Design, develop and test technology to support BackType’s products and services

Requirements

• Proficiency programming in Python
• Hands-on experience with most or all of the following: Linux, Apache, MySQL
• Willing to tackle technical problems outside your core competencies

Nice-to-Haves

• Knowledge of MySQL with an understanding of the impacts of indexing and schema design along with query analysis and optimization
• Proficiency programming in C/C++ and/or PHP
• Start-up experience

Note: These are paid internship positions

Application

We’re not really interested in reading standard cover letters. Instead, tell us why you’re interested in working for an early stage start-up rather than a large incumbent like Google or Microsoft. To stand out, tell us about interesting things you’ve built that show off your skillset. We’re looking for people that build things. Also, if you’re a member of Hacker News or Twitter, please include your username(s).

About BackType

BackType is a technology start-up with seed funding from Y Combinator and True Ventures, two top tier early stage VC firms based in Silicon Valley. Since launching publicly in August, 2008, BackType’s products and services have been used by millions of people all over the world. We get to collaborate and partner with lots of cool companies, and we’ve received attention from leading publications such as The New York Times, TechCrunch and BusinessWeek.

Until now, BackType has been widely considered a (blog) comment search engine. As you’ll discover, we’re much more than that. We find, archive and connect online conversations from over a million blogs, social networks and other social media in near real-time. That gives us a unique and comprehensive perspective on what topics, web pages and media people are talking about on the web, right now.

BackType is a real-time, conversational search engine. We index and connect online conversations from across the web in real-time, so you can see what people are saying about topics that interest you.

The new BackType will keep you up-to-date on the topics you’re interested in, surfacing reputable opinions and timely commentary happening around the web. We want to deliver the best search results by measuring the amount and quality of conversation surrounding articles, posts and other web pages.

The New Look

The redesign is focused on search; our search engine results pages show results from BackType as well as a stream of updates from Twitter.

What’s next?

We have a lot of work to do to improve the quality of our search results. This redesign is the first of many improvements that refocus BackType on the search and discovery of new ideas, opinions and information in real-time. Here’s a sample of what’s to come:

• Continuous improvements to search
• Real-time updates to search results
• Trending topics
• Advanced search

We want your feedback!

Please let us know what you think about the redesign. Your feedback’s important to us and will help us decide what changes we make to the service.

We want to build an exceptionally strong engineering team and the first engineer that joins us should reflect that. An ideal candidate would grow into a strong leadership role in the future. This is a full-time position in San Francisco, CA with compensation in both cash and equity.

Role & Responsibilities

• Immediately make large contributions to our technology
• Design and lead implementations of scalable real-time search services
• Maintain ownership of large portions of product and infrastructure
• Willing to tackle technical problems outside your core competencies

Requirements

• B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in Computer Science or equivalent
• Experience designing and developing high-performance web applications and services
• Proficiency programming in Python
• Knowledge of TCP/IP and network programming
• Knowledge of MySQL with an understanding of the impacts of indexing and schema design along with query analysis and optimization
• You should be prepared to make this start-up the primary focus of your life

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience with Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Strong knowledge of database scaling and common caching, sharding and partitioning approaches
• Experience with Sphinx, Lucene and/or Solr
• Familiarity with Apache, comet, git, memcache, nginx
• Proficiency programming in C/C++, PHP and/or Java
• Familiarity with XMPP and ejabberd
• Start-up experience

Application

A cover letter is not necessary — just a resume (single page preferred). To stand out, please include links to work/projects you’ve done that show off your skillset. We’re looking for people that build things.

About BackType

BackType is a technology start-up with seed funding from Y Combinator and True Ventures. Since launching publicly in August, 2008, BackType has been used by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world; our API serves millions of requests every single day. We also get to collaborate and partner with lots of cool companies. We’ve been mentioned in publications like The New York Times, TechCrunch and BusinessWeek.

Bitly allows users to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). They use BackType’s API to display related conversations on the Bitly info/statistics pages for URLs.

FiltrBox provides real-time social media monitoring for companies. They use BackType’s API to extend their reach into conversational media, allowing them to deliver even more coverage and quality.

HubSpot is inbound marketing software that helps your business get found on the Internet. They perform analysis and aggregation of data from BackType’s API for their customers’ keywords of interest.

Mahalo is a human powered search engine. They use BackType’s API to supplement human-curated result pages with related conversations happening around the web.

Radian6 is focused on building the complete monitoring and analysis solution for PR and advertising professionals. They use BackType’s API to supplement their own comment indexing in the Radian6 social media monitoring solution.

The Hype Machine keeps track of what music bloggers write about so you can discover new music. They use BackType’s API to uncover all the Hype Machine songs being shared on Twitter so they can create a chart of the top songs.

Please let us know how you’re using our API in the comments

Tweetcount allows you to display the number of tweets your posts receive, and lets readers retweet the page they’re on.

In addition to supporting awe.sm, Tweetcount now lets you choose from a variety of URL shorteners: Bit.ly, Su.pr, Digg, TinyURL and more! If you set bttc_short_url using javascript or WordPress’ custom fields for the widget and plugin, respectively, you can actually use any pre-shortened URL you like. As mentioned in our initial release, bt.io and awe.sm-powered shorteners will send click data to Google Analytics.

This release adds to a growing list of advantages over other buttons:

• More accurate tweet counts
• Support for more URL shorteners
• More customization options for the button’s appearance

When readers click the tweetcount, we also show them other places the post/article is being discussed (via BackType Connect)

Download Version 1.3 for WordPress »

Please let us know what you’d like to see in the next release in the comments!

Alternatively, you can follow @hypem for tweets of the hottest songs.

Are you developing an application that could benefit from BackType’s API? We’d love to talk to you.

Tweetcount has a couple of advantages over Tweetmeme’s button:

Awe.sm Integration & Analytics

Our plugin and widget both allow you to specify your own awe.sm-powered URL shortener for links in retweets. Not only does that let you “brand” your links, but it also gives you access to full clickstream data and the ability to pull stats into Google Analytics automagically with GA Tracking Parameters.

Tweetcount defaults to our own awe.sm-powered shortener, bt.io

Customization

Specifying the button’s colors is the first of many features that will allow you to customize the button. More generally, we’ll be very flexible with attribution, linking and customization, starting with button colors and the tweets your readers send out.

Check out our other plugins and widgets

BackTweets lets you search for links on Twitter. Searching with keywords will match any URL they’re used in; full URLs will help track links to articles, blog posts, videos and whatever else you’re interested in.

Now you can add alerts for the searches you’re following and receive updates via e-mail. Like BackType Alerts, you can set your emails to be delivered immediately, daily, or once a week.

Are there any features you’d like to see in BackTweets? Please let us know in the comments!