∞ Twitter buys Tweetie

Written by

Twitter on Friday revealed that it had purchased Tweetie, an app designed and developed by Loren Brichter for the Mac and iPhone.

In announcing the acquisition on its Web site, Twitter said that an analysis of the Twitter user experience in the App Store showed there was lots of room for improvement.

“People are looking for an app from Twitter, and they’re not finding one,” the company wrote on its blog. “So, they get confused and give up. It’s important that we optimize for user benefit and create an awesome experience.

Tweetie will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and will be free for all users. Currently the app costs $2.99.

Brichter will join the Twitter team and help the company with its mobile applications. He also said that he will be responsible for bringing out a client for the iPad.


  • http://intensedebate.com/people/zwei zwei

    Awesome news, for Lauren and Tweetie users. I just wonder what this means for the Mac version.

  • OpenYourEyes

    Awesome?

    Twitter just screwed over every app developer they have enticed to develop for their platform over the last several years, by entering into direct competition with them using predatory pricing (free) tactics. I hope Twitter is prepared to "do it all themselves" when it comes to any future apps. They may well just have to!

    • http://www.thegraphicmac.com Jim

      Cry me a river. App developers will just have to work a little harder and stop putting out half-baked garbage apps with "me too" features as a selling point.

      Apple makes Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, iPhoto – that hasn't stopped Microsoft, Adobe, Google and numerous other smaller developers from successfully competing with them. Adium is by far the most popular Mac chat client, even though iChat is free, capable and already installed on every new Mac.

      I'm sorry, but I don't have sympathy for developers when it comes to this sort of thing. They'll just have to work harder… just like everyone else in the world.

      • http://twitter.com/rolphus @rolphus

        As long as Twitter play by the rules, and allow other developers access to the same APIS and support that they will have internally, this doesn't seem like a bad move. If, however, they don't do that, it will be seriously disappointing for the ecosystem.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/zwei zwei

    Well, we've heard that Lauren still plans on releasing tweetie 2 for the Mac (sweet) …now I'm just wondering about what other platforms Twitter is officially supporting. (Since tweetie currently only runs on Apple's platforms)

    I'm guessing they will just have another dev port his app over to Android?

  • http://www.theuniversalsteve.com SSteve

    This is good news for that actress chick who whined so loudly about having to shell out $2.99 for Tweetie 2.0. Now she'll be able to afford the new version.