"A new app is registered every 1.5 seconds, fueling a spike in ecosystem growth in the areas of analytics, curation and publisher tools," the company said .

The exponential growth in Twitter applications is a sign that significant opportunities exist for external developers with valuable ideas for tools that help end users, publishers and marketers on the microblogging service, the company said.

Twitter developers, of which there are about 750,000 worldwide, have attracted more than $500 million from investors since December of last year. During the same time period, larger companies have paid more than $1 billion to outright acquire Twitter developer firms, Twitter said.

"This level of investment is indicative of the opportunity for developers and entrepreneurs to build successful businesses as part of the Twitter platform," the company said in the blog post.

Twitter's relationship with external developers, a lovefest by all accounts in the company's first few years, has been portrayed by disgruntled developers as increasingly frayed in the past 18 months or so.