Well, again I would call the Factory not a class but a package with a "static" method: Bod::Social::Factory::new_for(network => 'Twitter') (borrowing from Fletch's comment above). Perl makes that distinction possible whereas I guess in Java it would technically be a class. OTOH, why not if it suits you?

That said, and purisms aside, I would expect the constructor of a class to return ... erm ... an object of that same class. In Java, I hope I guess correctly, it is impossible for a constructor to return anything other than the object of that class (there is no return statement as such). So, Bod::Social::Factory->new(network => 'Twitter') returning TwitterClass or XYZClass or ... depending on input params strikes me as a bit weird, or unexpected. Where Bod::Social::Factory::new_for(network => 'Twitter'); (notice the difference in ::new_for) is more intuitive for me. But even TIMTOWTDI is spelled in many ways hehe!

Now, what would be inside new()/new_for()? I would put in there this:

use Bod::Social::Twitter;
sub new_for {
  my ($network, $params) = @_;
  if( $network eq 'Twitter' ){ return Bod::Social::Twitter->new($param
+s) }
  elsif( ... ){ ... }
  die "don't know network $network"
}
[download]

Which also implies a class Bod::Social::Twitter, which can be a subclass of Bod::Social (option (2)) or be completely independent, if you did not find enough common ground to create a social API in Bod::Social

That was helpful to me: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/design_pattern/factory_pattern.htm, but thankfully Perl is way less restrictive than Java.

bw, bliako