When Twitter acquired Tweetie 2 earlier this year, it established a precedent for the microblog as it delved deeper into the mobile realm. Since then, Twitter has launched an official app on Blackberry and Google Android devices, carrying through on its intentions to regain the mobile audience that had become so familiar with third party apps for their remote interaction with the site. With official apps now flanking either side of the iPhone, the re-branded Tweetie 2 has finally emerged onto the iTunes App Store scene as the While the decision to stick to the scheme put forth by Tweetie 2 wasn’t necessarily surprising, it also points to the predicament of fragmenting your services based on a device’s capabilities. This is a blessing and a curse for a company like Twitter, as it has been able to make the premium features of Tweetie 2 free with the official iPhone app. In doing so, the iPhone app now far outranks the offerings Twitter has for Android and BlackBerry devices.
On the one hand, this is part of the progression of the mobile app scene. Different devices have different features that appeal to different consumers. Twitter can take advantage of these unique consumer niches to provide optimized apps. On the other hand, these differences also create a developer’s nightmare, with multiple platforms on which a single service needs to run.
So far, Twitter and its faith in moving forward with the concepts that Tweetie 2 had already established, is a great move for the company. As Twitter looks to expand its mobile presence, it will eventually have to make similar concessions for the rest of its user base. For now, as with most companies, the mobile focus remains on the iPhone.
