A little more than a month after revealing that it had reached one billion posts, 4Chan has announced that it has released an API that should allow developers to build better third-party extensions for the imageboard. According to site creator Chris Poole, better known as Moot, around 1.5 percent of 4Chan's traffic comes from these extensions along with the official version, and the new read-only JSON API could end up having "huge performance implications." As of today each thread posted on the site will be rendered in JSON — a more efficient alternative to HTML — and accessible to developers right here. "'4chan' and 'API' are certainly two words I never thought I'd find in the same sentence," said Moot, adding that "the decision to release an API was partially out of necessity, but also because I'm curious to see how people will use it."

4chan now has a full featured native extension and JSON API. First major feature update in 5 years! 4chan.org/news#108

— 4chan (@4chan) September 5, 2012