"Much of the early work on the Twitter Platform has been filling holes in the Twitter product. It is the kind of work General Computer was doing in Cambridge in the early 80s. Some of the most popular third party services on Twitter are like that. Mobile clients come to mind. Photo sharing services come to mind. URL shorteners come to mind. Search comes to mind. Twitter really should have had all of that when it launched or it should have built those services right into the Twitter experience.
When you talk to a new user, they want to know how to post a photo to Twitter, they want to know "what is this bit.ly thing?", they want to know how to get Twitter on their iPhone. Names like Summize, Twitpic, Tweetie make no sense to them. Of course, without Summize, Twitpic, and Tweetie we would not have the Twitter we have today. They and many other third party products and services filled out the holes in the Twitter product and made it work better."
what will this mean for other twitter app developers? twitter will be competing head on with them and presumably be able to implement new features quicker and easier.
It could go either way: because Twitter are now eating their own dogfood (i.e. the Twitter API) perhaps that API will improve. Alternately they may instead be tempted to start creating internal-only APIs.
Well, this is something like the famous saying "if you can't beat them, join them!" In this case "lost the edge, offer a big pile of cash and acquire them".
I think its a logic business move for Twitter. There is no point for them to spend the time and energy into an app that might take a reasonable part of the iPhone market. This way their investment immediatly gives them a huge part of the market.
I'v been using Nimbu for some time but it was constantly crashing and I had to reset db several times so eventually I gave up and switched. how is it nowadays?
They've been releasing beta updates like crazy lately. The database update stuff happened a while ago, so if you just start from scratch it should be more stable.
To be honest I don't see what is wrong with saving $2.99. In fact I think it would be silly to go spend $2.99 on Tweetie when you know it is going to be free soon.
I upvoted you because you shouldn't get downvotes just because you someone disagrees with a comment. Rather downvotes should only be used if a comment is irrelevant or trollish.
It seems a shame to be losing the name Tweetie; I think Twitter should keep it - an established brand and a clever name, it's part of what their buying.
The move to buy Tweetie surely ratcheted up the pressure for the likes of Twitpic to sell. As the uncertainty begins to spread in the minds of these developers, the price will likely drop, and make a sale more palatable to Twitter.
Why would they do that though? They could do a better job by building it into the site itself, and it would probably work out to be cheaper for such a simple feature.
True. The benefit of buying is eliminating one of the big pic players, and thereby disrupting the other twitter client apps. You also get an inventory of pics and a site where you could promote your new twitter properties.
Pile of gold, eh? I guess this is why Tweetie for the Mac is still so extremely minimal. The developer got lazy because of his pile of gold. Bye bye motivation. Money makes people lazy.
Wh... what? Minimal applications aren't a result of laziness, they're designed that way. One of the many reasons why, IMO, Tweetie is the best Twitter client for OS X.
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/04/the-twitter-platform.html
"Much of the early work on the Twitter Platform has been filling holes in the Twitter product. It is the kind of work General Computer was doing in Cambridge in the early 80s. Some of the most popular third party services on Twitter are like that. Mobile clients come to mind. Photo sharing services come to mind. URL shorteners come to mind. Search comes to mind. Twitter really should have had all of that when it launched or it should have built those services right into the Twitter experience.
When you talk to a new user, they want to know how to post a photo to Twitter, they want to know "what is this bit.ly thing?", they want to know how to get Twitter on their iPhone. Names like Summize, Twitpic, Tweetie make no sense to them. Of course, without Summize, Twitpic, and Tweetie we would not have the Twitter we have today. They and many other third party products and services filled out the holes in the Twitter product and made it work better."