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Social third-quarter 2012: analysis and outlook

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 06:55:54 +0000

Social media technologies continue to permeate marketing and enterprise collaboration, even if investors felt let down in the third quarter by their consumer-facing businesses like Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga. So B2B technology offerings in support of marketing and collaboration will soon steal all the social tech attention. This quarterly wrap-up analyzes these events, and provides a near-term outlook for trends, technologies and companies to watch in the next 18 to 24 months.

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Tweetbot for Mac finally comes in for a landing — with $20 price tag

Erica Ogg — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 17:16:55 +0000

After navigating Twitter’s drastic rule changes for third-party developers set forth this summer, the much-anticipated Mac Twitter client, Tweetbot, is now available for sale in the Mac App Store, the company behind it announced on its website Thursday. The app comes with an eyebrow-raising price of $20. Even though it’s from Tapbots, the same people behind Tweetbot for iOS, which is well-regarded for its design skills, that makes the Mac client quite a bit more expensive than the average Twitter client, many of which are free or less than $5.

But Tapbots says it had little choice. Tapbots is just one of the developers trying to work within Twitter’s new framework that severely limits the access third-party clients like theirs have to the Twitter API. There was a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth among Twitter client developers this past summer when the company announced these restrictions, which are meant to encourage the use of official Twitter apps instead of third-party clients.

Tapbots explained the $20 price tag on the app by blaming Twitter’s “token limits,” which effectively cap how many users their Mac client can have:

Once we use up the tokens granted to us by Twitter, we will no longer be able to sell the app to new users. Tapbots will continue to support Tweetbot for Mac for existing customers at that time.

This limit and our desire to continue to support the app once we sell out is why we’ve priced Tweetbot for Mac a little higher than we’d like. It’s the best thing we can do for the long term viability of the product. We know some will not be happy about Tweetbot for Mac’s pricing, but the bottom line is Twitter needs to provide us with more tokens for us to be able to sell at a lower the price.

The company’s Tweetbot app for iOS is $2.99, but the token limits are not as low for iOS apps as for Mac apps.

Tapbots is so concerned about being able to add new customers and not hit those Twitter-imposed limits that it’s even asking users who participated in the app’s beta that don’t want to use the final version to revoke access to the app so the token can be used immediately by someone else.

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Makers of popular Twitter client Tweetbot take their skills to App.net with Netbot

Eliza Kern — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:24:31 +0000

App.net, Dalton Caldwell’s proposal for a open developer infrastructure based on a paid model of users, won yet another note of approval Wednesday with the news that the makers of Tweetbot have developed an app for the network called Netbot. While App.net hasn’t hit anything close to mainstream popularity yet — and isn’t necessarily aiming for it right now — the fact that the Tweetbot makers have turned their talents to an App.net client just serves as further validation that Caldwell’s efforts could have staying power.

The developers behind Tapbots have created one of the most critically-acclaimed Twitter clients, Tweetbot, that users have praised for its clean design and useful tools. However, the popular app’s days are probably limited, with Twitter cracking down on third-party clients and limiting just how many new users will be able to register with Tweetbot going forward. Netbot for App.net looks much like the Tweetbot for Twitter app, with minor differences. Netbot is available for $4.99 on iPhone and iPad, slightly more expensive than the $2.99 Tweetbot for iPhone and iPad.

Caldwell introduced App.net this summer not as a “paid Twitter,” as some have called it, but rather as a paid developer ecosystem. While App.net looks very much like Twitter right now, it could in the future could take the form of games or search clients. App.net’s product is the infrastructure, meaning users and developers must pay for access and the platform, in contrast to Twitter’s product, which is the ad-supported content created by users.

Under Caldwell’s model, the pricing for entry is high, but once users join, developers are paid to produce useful, well-liked apps, which gives them the incentive to build quality products for the network and keeps App.net from competing with developers and building its own apps. Adding Netbot to the lineup of apps on Caldwell’s platform is a significant moment of validation that the system could take hold.

Right now, Caldwell is focused on bringing in paying users who will contribute revenue to the model and allow App.net to in turn pay developers, which explains the high price of entry (although it’s getting cheaper as the user base grows.) App.net hasn’t seen wide adoption outside of nerds and journalists at this point, but if those early adopters are paying and growing slowly, that’s okay, according to Caldwell. App.net as something like computers in the early days — nerds were the first adopters, but eventually average people started buying them to play games and run software.

The Tapbots makers explained in their blog post announcing Netbot that Caldwell’s user-centric model appealed to them:

We’ve been working very closely with App.net. Their goals of always putting users first resonates with what we believe at Tapbots. Even though App.net is currently a small network, we expect big things from them and are proud to be a part of the community.

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Tweetbot’s new Mac client gets buzz as Twitter crackdown looms

Eliza Kern — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 00:37:39 +0000

Tapbots, maker of the popular Tweetbot iPhone Twitter client, announced in a blog post Wednesday that it has finished the early stages of development on a Mac version of the application, an exciting development for fans of the product. But the news arrives weeks after Twitter announced plans to restrict third-party uses of its API and encourage Twitter users to use Twitter products.

Tweetbot for iPhone launched in April 2011, and has quickly become a popular third-party Twitter app among users who appreciated the company’s eye for design and inclusion of features that didn’t exist on other Twitter mobile apps at the time.

At the time iPhone app launched, GigaOM wrote about why the app seemed so appealing:

“Special” is the perfect word to describe the apps Tapbots puts out. Few developers operating in the App Store pay as close attention to detail, or offer such a refined user experience. You get the sense when using any Tapbots app that every sound, every gradient, and every interface element placement decision was the product of many hours of careful consideration. Tweetbot is no exception to this rule, with a number of new features that are unique to the app, including a customizable home interface, the ability to quickly change between lists, and user-defined functions for triple-taps.

The app has proved popular, especially with tech enthusiasts and heavy Twitter users. John Gruber of Daring Fireball called it his favorite Twitter app, and it currently ranks 107th among paid apps in the iTunes store out of the overall total of 650,000 apps currently available in the app store.

So it’s understandable why fans are excited to see the client come to Mac (although it’s still in a very early “alpha” version), but it has arrived at an awkward time, as Twitter adjusts how it deals with third-party apps. Twitter recently announced an impending crackdown on use of the company’s API. Twitter seems to prefer that users read tweets on Twitter, especially as advertising plays a more prominent role in the company’s future.

So how does this strategy affect the release of a new third-party Twitter client?

A Twitter representative said she had no information on the company’s attitude toward Tweetbot or the release, but Marco Arment, the creator of Instapaper, raised the questions Wednesday that many Twitter developers are pondering in sharing why he likes Tweetbot for Mac and why he hopes Twitter will let it continue to operate:

This might be the last new full-featured client that Twitter permits. (They may not even permit this, but I bet it’ll be fine for at least a while.) …

But when Twitter bought Tweetie from Loren Brichter, I think it’s clear now that they only cared about the iPhone client. They’ve severely neglected the Mac and iPad clients, effectively killing some of the best Twitter apps ever made. (Given their updates to the iPhone version, maybe we’re better off.) Twitter for Mac in particular is in severe disrepair, with significant bugs going unfixed for over a year and major recent features still missing, such as native photo uploads. And now that Loren no longer works at Twitter, it looks like nobody there is willing and able to keep these apps healthy.

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