Twilio arrived much later, but the API patterns it popularized—parameterized requests, server-side endpoints, and callback-driven workflows—were prototyped on the early web via CGI scripts, HTML forms, and browser scripting between 1995 and 1998.
Long before the Twitter API existed, the mid-1990s web taught developers how to integrate services using forms, CGI endpoints, and early browser scripting—patterns that later matured into modern social platform APIs.
From CGI scripts and HTML forms to early browser scripting, 1995–1998 created the need for structured, portable data—setting the stage for XML in web API history.
From 1990 to 1994, the Web’s earliest HTTP interfaces were built for document retrieval, not event delivery. This chapter explains how those design choices delayed “push” and web notifications—and why that mattered for later web APIs.