Tweetie was a client for the social networking website

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. There is a mobile version that runs on iPhone, iPod Touch, and

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating ...

, and a desktop version runs on

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion (respectively 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7). Both the

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

and Mac versions of Tweetie were acquired by Twitter on April 9, 2010 and were re-released as the official Twitter clients for iOS and Mac.

History

Tweetie 2.0 for iPhone was the first app to introduce the Pull-to-refresh user interface mechanism. The Mac OS X version of Twitter had many of the same features as its mobile sibling. In addition to a free advertising supported version, the paid iOS and OS X versions cost $2.99 and $19.95 respectively. The beta of the Mac version was leaked to the popular torrent site

Demonoid Demonoid is a BitTorrent tracker and website founded in 2003 to facilitate file-sharing related discussion and provide a searchable index of torrent files. The site underwent intermittent periods of extended downtime in its history due to the ...

a week before the official release.

Acquisition by Twitter

On April 9, 2010, Twitter announced that the company had acquired Tweetie. Twitter stated that the acquisition stemmed from the lack of an official, Twitter-branded

mobile application A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on des ...

. Tweetie was

rebranded Rebranding is a marketing strategy in which a new name, term, symbol, design, concept or combination thereof is created for an established brand with the intention of developing a new, differentiated identity in the minds of consumers, investors ...

as "Twitter for iPhone" and released on May 17, 2010. The company's founder,

Loren Brichter Loren Brichter is an American software developer who is best known for creating Tweetie and the pull-to-refresh interaction technique. Personal life and influence Loren Brichter was born in Manhattan, Manhattan, New York on November 15, 1984. ...

, became part of Twitter's mobile division and helped launch the "Twitter for iPad" application. On January 6, 2011, Twitter announced that the company had also acquired the desktop version of Tweetie, changing the name to "Twitter for Mac". "Twitter for Mac" was launched on the new

Mac App Store The App Store (also known as the Mac App Store) is a digital distribution platform for macOS apps, often referred to as Mac apps, created and maintained by Apple Inc. The platform was announced on October 20, 2010, at Apple's "Back to the Mac ...

the same day. On Tuesday, May 21, 2013 Twitter announced that certain patents related to Tweetie would never be used except to defend Twitter. Ultimately "Twitter for Mac" was discontinued after a very slow maintenance schedule in March 2018, being eventually replaced by the iOS version compiled using

Catalyst Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...

in October 2019.

References

External links

Tweetie
on iOS App Store
Tweetie
on

Review
at

Daring Fireball John Gruber (born 1973) is a technology blogger, UI designer, and one of the inventors of the Markdown markup language. History Gruber is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor of Science in computer science from Drexel Uni ...

John Gruber John Gruber (born 1973) is a technology blogger, UI designer, and one of the inventors of the Markdown markup language. History Gruber is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor of Science in computer science from Drexel Univ ...

Review
at Tweetcrunch
Review
at Smoking Apples
Developer's Site
{{Twitter Navigation 2008 software Microblogging software IOS software Twitter services and applications Twitter, Inc. acquisitions