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Twitter Acquires Atebits, Maker of Tweetie
- jseifer 17y agoCongratulations to the Tweetie developer! Official Twitter blog post here: http://blog.twitter.com/2010/04/twitter-for-iphone.html http://blog.twitter.com/2010/04/twitter-for-iphone.html
- tdm911 17y agowhat 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.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- shib71 17y agoIt 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.
- abraham 17y agoTwitter has been eating their own dogfood with http://mobile.twitter.com http://mobile.twitter.com
- khelloworld 17y agoTo put it succinctly: All of us are royally screwed.
- mikeyur 17y agoI think there is enough room for everyone, I agree with what Marco tweeted about it: "I think the health of the Twitter-client market, for apps that all do pretty much the same things, shows that they'll all be fine." http://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/11914060592 http://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/11914060592
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- iamgabeaudick 17y agoAnd so it begins.
- iamgabeaudick 17y agoAny idea when Tweetie will be made free?
- maerek 17y agoFTA: "Twitter will offer it for free and rename it Twitter for iPhone."
- dannyr 17y agoSo you are planning to wait to download Tweetie until it becomes free? To save $2.99?
- jayair 17y agoTo 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.
- dannyr 17y agoThe developer probably doesn't need $2.99 from you but I don't mind giving somebody a small amount for a good piece for software.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- paraschopra 17y agoI 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.
- gabrielroth 17y agoI downvoted you because meta-discussion of when and how downvotes should be used is irrelevant and boring.
- pstinnett 17y agoWondering what this means for Tweetie on OS X.
- timdorr 17y agoI recently made the switch to Nambu. It's not as pretty, but it's way more functional and useful to me, particularly with the combined view.
- poutine 17y agoAgreed, Nambu is way better. Tweetie on OSX is pretty feature poor, all flash and little substance.
- kes 17y agoDisagree. Tweetie is better simply because it has separate windows for each tweet. That feature alone has kept me using it.
- Vitaly 17y agoI'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?
- timdorr 17y agoThey'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.
- jgilliam 17y agoThere's a new twitter petition asking for it to be open sourced. http://act.ly/1w1 http://act.ly/1w1
- fo0tprintz 17y agoLoren is hard at work on it: http://is.gd/bmGoR http://is.gd/bmGoR. A beta is due to Macheist nano bundle purchasers.
- niekmaas 17y agoWell, 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.
- swilliams 17y agoWhoa. Probably a smart move by Twitter. Tweetie is one of the best and most polished apps on the iPhone.
- CoachRufus87 17y agoCongratulations! Well deserved.
- esornoso 17y agoTwitter + Tweetie = Tweetrouble
- zackattack 17y agoMaybe Tweetrubble.
- mkramlich 17y agocongrats to Loren! i love his app. a true craftsman.
- stevenp 17y agoIf I were a betting man, I'd be looking to Twitpic next.
- brandnewlow 17y agoExcept that during a March 12, 2009 meeting, they discussed it and decided not to buy it, according to the Twitter notes leaked to Techcrunch. http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/twitters-internal-strategy-laid-bare-to-be-the-pulse-of-the-planet/ http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/twitters-internal-strategy-... I always felt a little bad for the Twitpic guy for that. Also, that conversation from the notes spelled out pretty clearly that Twitter would eventually start pulling things like this.
- wheels 17y agoGiven that Twitpic apparently has multi-million annual revenue, I won't cry for them too long. ;-) http://www.businessinsider.com/twitpic-is-doing-15-to-2-million-in-annual-sales-2010-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/twitpic-is-doing-15-to-2-mill...
- rythie 17y agoMy guess is that's going to pretty expensive to buy a company with that much profit already and he's already turned down a $10m offer.
- ryanhuff 17y agoThe 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.
- abraham 17y agoIf Twitpic was well implemented I could see it but it has no design and little innovation.
- cmelbye 17y ago
- abraham 17y agoPush Twitter to open source Tweetie for Mac: http://act.ly/1w1 http://act.ly/1w1
- st3fan 17y agoPile 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.
- blahpro 17y agoWh... 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.
- bradendouglass 17y agoI do believe this quote came from Leonardo da Vinci: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" I don't recall him being lazy.
- nrao123 17y agoI guess Fred Wilson (Investor in Twitter) sort of Indicated this was going to happen... http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/04/the-twitter-platform.html 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."
- ErrantX 17y agoIt 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.
- bradendouglass 17y agofeel this exact way. Tweetie is very close to twitter and I feel that they could continue the brand without diluting the Twitter brand itself.
- blahpro 17y ago“I’m [...] starting work on turning Tweetie.app into Twitter.app”. I bet there are a lot of unhappy Twitter iPhone/iPad client developers today.