No one likes to see an app die, but when it's a series of apps that are tied into one of the world's most popular social networking services, it came as no surprise that app developers were very unhappy with Twitter's recent announcements about TweetDeck.
Writing on the Posterous blog, the Twitter team said it was focusing more on its Web development efforts than its offerings around mobile users and smartphones.
"We are discontinuing support for our older apps: TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone," the post said. "They will be removed from their respective app stores in early May and will stop functioning shortly thereafter."
The post ended with, "We are excited by what the future holds. We hope you are, too." Based on the immediate reaction on Twitter, however, developers sounded less than excited and more furious.
Twitter announces it's killing native TweetDeck on Posterous, which Twitter is also killing. tweetdeck.posterous.com/an-update-on-t… #LikeRainOnYerWeddinDay
— Zeke Weeks (@zekeweeks) March 4, 2013
TweetDeck to users: drop dead. RT @tweetdeck: An update on TweetDeck tweetdeck.posterous.com/an-update-on-t…
— sammydee (@sammydee) March 4, 2013
Read more here. Thanks again, Twitter. tweetdeck.posterous.com/an-update-on-t…
— Nitroz (@NitrozK) March 4, 2013
j.mp/WXD7zg Goodbye my loyal Tweetdeck AIR. Since I can't afford Hootsuite I guess I'll have to settle for less functionality.
— Al Hunter (@rastalam) March 7, 2013
In a post on his personal blog, British developer Ian Renton provided a bit more context on what was at stake in Twitter's decision.
(Twitter) is the only Android app that can combine "mentions" from multiple Twitter accounts and "notifications" from a Facebook account in a single column view. Surely this is a feature that plenty of people would like in an app," he wrote. "The functionality that Twitter is removing by retiring TweetDeck is simply not found anywhere else in the Android ecosystem. Until some other application steps in to fill the gap, a function that I and many other users love is simply and infuriatingly impossible to achieve on Android."
Of course, not everyone was offering TweetDeck app eulogies. Just a few days after the announcement, some were ready to move on.
Apps always felt like pagers to me. You remember pagers, before cell phones? They were relevant for a minute. gigaom.com/2013/03/04/twi…
— Joe McMonster (@JoeMcMonster) March 5, 2013
2 yrs from now: remember that time Curiosity landed on Mars & we discussed it on that now-dead social media platform? buswk.co/W1eyhF
— John De Cristofaro (@johngineer) March 5, 2013