Nigel Legg wrote: > Dewalt, surely it's a bit early to say they are kaput? As far as I can see, > all twitter clients have their merits, and people tend to stick with the one > that does what they want it to do in the way they want it to do it. I find > it odd that, even though twitter has been directly competing with twitter > clients through it's website for as long as the API has been around, the > fact of twitter buying out a client means clients are dead. Personally, I > think you have over reacted to this.
Whilst it's fair to say that people broadly stick with what they've got, any ordinary user that is using a different twitter-only client is quite likely to hear about this and look into the official app, and any new users/people just getting an iphone will immediately spring for the official app. Why? It's *free*, it's got loads of publicity, it's well known as a good app in it's former Tweetie form, and in developing it using new API features (even presuming it's kept to use of the public APIs) before they are announced it will have a very major head start as compared to apps made by anyone else. Whilst yes free apps may well survive this by virtue of being free, there's little chance of them growing much in user counts, or being able to put ads on to get some payoff from their hard work unless Twitter does with ex-Tweetie (which whilst not impossible I'd say is perhaps unlikely) since ads would detract from the UX and so potentially push people towards Twitter's client. Having said all that though, I have to say that realistically this is what you have to be prepared for when working with third-party services - iPhone, Android, Twitter, Facebook, etc etc all have the same weakness: if the company takes a fancy to your competitor, or clones your functionality, then you're likely toast. -- To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
