It was a mutualistic, not parasitic, relationship. Twitter's product development stagnated the day they nerfed the third party dev api. 3rd party Twitter clien

It was a mutualistic, not parasitic, relationship. Twitter's product development stagnated the day they nerfed the third party dev api. 3rd party Twitter clients were once considered a design playground where the best elements not only influenced Twitter's future design language, but also that of iOS as a whole. Tweetie's pull-to-refresh is emblematic of that. I'm pretty sure Tweetbot invented the (partial) left/right swipe to invoke different actions on tweets that have since become a mainstay of email apps.