Tweetie Acquisition Sparks Twitter Developer Freakout
ADOTAS – I was a little scared when I first foraged into the App Store — I’d read so much about what a labyrinth it was, how difficult it was to find the best apps… But then again, I just wanted the basics for my new iPhone: The New York Times, TechCrunch, Facebook, Twitter…
Wait… There is no homegrown Twitter app. I forgot I’d written mockingly about that before. An industry professional suggested downloading several Twitter apps such as Tweetdeck and Tweetie as each has its own advantages — and disadvantages, as I soon discovered.
But that was the de facto agreement between Twitter and third-party developers — Twitter offered a service and developers pimped it out. It was apparently an amiable experience until Twitter bought itself a mobile app.
Ahead of the Twitter developer conference, Tweetie has taken the crown of mobile prince as Twitter acquired its parent company Atebits. Like most royalty, the app is going to have a name change to Twitter for iPhone and will be free, compared to $2.99 for the souped-up version.
Developer Loren Brichter, the brains behind Atebit and the winner of 2009 Apple Design Award, is joining the Twitter mobile team and is off to work on a Twitter for iPad application.
So are other third-party developers giving Brichter a pat on the back and giving Twitter the thumbs up? Quite the opposite — many are appalled by Twitter’s apparent strategy change from encouraging developers to build out the microblogger to competing with them — a process Chief Executive Evan Williams called “inevitable” in an interview with The New York Times. Some have formed a “Twitter union” and many will be attending a briskly assembled summit tomorrow, a day before the actual Twitter conference, to share their grievances.
Developers were already grumbling concerning a blog post called “The Twitter Inflection Point” by board member and venture capitalist Fred Wilson, who said that the early work on Twitter platform was about “filling in the holes in the Twitter product” — including mobile clients, search functions, URL shorteners and photo-sharing. What rubbed developers raw was Wilson’s suggestion that these should have been plugged up internally when Twitter launched — developers had that chopped liver feeling.
But Wilson compared Twitter’s journey to Facebook — initially apps were developed to fill in the gaps or were variations on site offerings. As Facebook tidied up ship and expanded its features, developers turned to a new business: social gaming, which analysts expect to be a $1.6 billion dollar industry. In other words, developers need to move on to the next big thing, which could be gaming a la Twitter, but Wilson also sees development in verticals and enterprise.
Developers apparently don’t like having their boat rocked. That said, some of the slighted are looking toward other real-timers such as Facebook and Google Buzz, but in addition to their Twitter work.
Twitter itself is not deaf to developer cries — the head of Twitter’s platform team, Ryan Sarver, said he’s planning on attending the besmirched developer’s summit, most likely with some soothing thoughts to offset the vitriol.
Reader Comments.
Completely agree with u, Twitter has really screwed their developer community over
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