CrunchFund investor MG Siegler apparently received information that Twitter has ended development of Twitter for Mac. Twitter for Mac has been neglected for over a year while the company was busy revamping its website, mobile site and mobile apps as well as drafting the new API for 3rd party developers. The new API which was released yesterday effectively shuts out those who wish to create a client app that replaces the official experience.
The Mac app was built by Loren Brichter when Twitter brought him and his apps into the company in 2010. Brichter is of course the former Apple software engineer who built Tweetie for both iPhone and Mac, the forerunners to today’s official Twitter apps for Apple devices. The Mac app was last updated in June 2011, not long before Brichter left Twitter.
Twitter recently announced that it wants to deliver a consistent user experience no matter what platform its members were using. This served as the basis to push aside any unofficial client apps such as Tweetbot, Flipboard, Twitterrific, Echofon, Scope, and many others, but looking at the various official apps as well as its websites, it’s clear that Twitter’s offerings are far from being consistent.
Given the fact that Twitter spent far more time and resources on its mobile apps and websites, it’s clear that it’s not that interested in keeping the desktop apps around. Its acquisition of TweetDeck in May last year seemed more like a defensive move against the fact that TweetDeck was nearly acquired by UberMedia which makes Twitter apps for mobile devices. Twitter for some reason didn’t want UberMedia to have its hands on TweetDeck so it stepped in and sealed the deal for itself.
Since the acquisition, TweetDeck has had many features removed, its interface cleaned up, and the app redirected to serve Twitter exclusively. It has also been updated to deliver as close an experience as possible to the website while still allowing users to sign in and post with multiple accounts. TweetDeck is available for Mac, Chrome, as well as as its own website which means it’s more ubiquitous than Twitter for Mac.
Since Twitter acquired TweetDeck, it and Twitter for Mac were always going to be competing to win the approval of Twitter’s execs. While the company continuously updates TweetDeck (the latest update was in early August), Twitter for Mac has been ignored despite changes to the website and the overall user experience that Twitter wanted people to have.
Perhaps Twitter saw how redundant it is to have both TweetDeck and Twitter for Mac and decided to kill off the one that was less popular regardless of the fact that both apps address different kinds of users. It seems that it’s much easier to deliver Twitter’s vision through TweetDeck than to reshape Twitter for Mac to fit that need.
If Twitter does decide to shutter Twitter for Mac, the reasons would be quite obvious, and it may want to rename TweetDeck.
