Friends 1.6 is Coming Soon
Arguably, Friends 1.6 is an even bigger update than 1.5 was. We have added a ton of new features and fixed more bugs than can be listed, but below are a few of the biggest changes. Friends 1.6 was submitted to the App Store yesterday, and should be available very soon.
- Search for your friends on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Huge photo improvements! You can now post photos directly to Facebook.
- Comment on any Facebook photo.
- Awesome new way to view your contacts.
- Retweet any post!
- View photos from picplz.com in-line.
- Fixed an issue with Instapaper login.
- Timestamps on every post.
- Major speed and stability enhancements.
We also have a pretty big surprise in store for the release, so be sure to stay tuned! Grab a copy of Friends today, if you haven’t already.
Twitter’s Developer Hostility and What You Can Do to Help
In light of today’s announcement by Twitter that third parties should no longer create apps to compete with them, I call on you all to delete the official apps and try out some third party goodness. Below, I’ve compiled a list of some awesome apps, let me know which one’s I’ve missed in the comments.
“More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no.”.
R.I.P. Tweetie
There has been a lot of debate about the newly released update for Twitter for iPhone. I personally switched a long time ago to Friends (I am biased, of course), but I tried out the update to see what all the hubbub was about. Two words sum up my feelings, “what’s happened?”.
If you are not familiar with Twitter for iPhone’s origin, it all started when a company called atebits (led by an amazing developer named Loren Brichter), created Tweetie. It was the leading Twitter client, by far, and had a number of tremendously inspiring touches to it. It was so awesome, in fact, that hundreds of thousands of people paid for it not once, but twice. I gladly did, I found it the fastest, smoothest, and best way to use Twitter. So did Twitter Inc., it seems, because they acquired Tweetie and Loren’s talents in April 2010.
Many developers thought this sounded the death knell for Twitter apps, considering the best client was now a free app with no ads or limitations. However, Friends has done great since launch, but we recognise it’s not a traditional Twitter client. The scariest part of the acquisition was that many developers thought, in time, the app would get access to API features other clients wouldn’t. Facebook’s app does, so why wouldn’t Twitter’s? I don’t believe this has happened yet, but never say never.
Something dramatically changed in Twitter 3.3, and I don’t just mean with the trending topics bar. It just doesn’t feel like Loren is at the helm anymore, or worse, corporate policies and deadlines are resulting in standards dropping. We should all remember that Twitter isn’t the startup that it once was, it’s a for-profit corporation with 300 employee’s to pay and many millions in venture capital backing it.
One of the most under-rated features of Tweetie was that it never crashed, literally never. Upon updating to Twitter 3.3, the app crashed on launch every time. I first put this down to my iPhone and installed a fresh copy, yet it was still crashing every time. I eventually came back to the app about an hour later, and it worked fine.
As for the new trending topics bar, regardless of whether it is showing ads or not, it seems to be very poorly implemented. It randomly appears and disappears, doesn’t animate, and worse, covers tweets. Loren’s programming talents are well known within the community, and I struggle to accept that he wrote this buggy piece of code. I hear an update has been submitted that fixes a lot of the behaviour with the bar, but I think we’ll have to live with it in some form from now on.
I’m sad to see the direction Twitter Inc. is taking, and feel their attempts at monetization are going to alienate the influential part of their user base who advocated it when it originally launched. Don’t mistake me for wanting Twitter to never make money, in fact, I am ready to hand over money to them right now. I would gladly pay a monthly subscription just to use the service. Alas, I fear there just isn’t enough people that would, and promoted partners will continue paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for tweets that I will simple try to ignore. What’s the next step for Twitter and monetization? I don’t know, I just hope they are smart enough to leave the Twitter API alone. ¡Viva la Tweetie!
Facebook Twitter