Fraser Speirs Cocoa and Photos

Twitterrific 3

Congratulations to Craig Hockenberry and his co-conspirators at the Iconfactory on the release of Twitterrific 3. It looks like a great upgrade - I particularly like having your replies shown inline, even if you’re not following the other person.

The interesting part is that the new version is either paid-for ($15) or advertising-supported. Personally, I paid and was happy too. Let’s face it - if you’re an indie Mac developer, Twitter is like a year round WWDC doughnut stand. It’s where I hang out with the other indies for the other fifty-one weeks of the year. If an easy interface to that world isn’t worth $15 to me, then I’ve got some messed up priorities.

As Twitterrific goes from free to ‘monetized’, I’m having flashbacks to the release of FlickrExport 2. The transition from free to not-free is never easy, but good software will usually make that leap. There’s only so much work people can do for the love of it. I don’t know many Mac developers who are independently wealthy and are looking for ways to fill their time. At some point, your efforts have to start paying for themselves so you can have a life too.

Craig, all the best with Twitterrific 3. People say this phrase to me all the time about Flickr and FlickrExport: “without it I wouldn’t be using the service”. The same is true for Twitterific, Twitter and me.

Thanks Frasier!

I’ve always thought of Twitter being a virtual break room for those of us who call the Internet our office. It’s great to see positive responses like yours as I try to foster that notion with Twitterrific.

Geez, I’m such an idiot — please forgive me for getting your first name wrong. FRASER, FRASER, FRASER …

I can’t really explain why, but paying to use a desktop client for a web service that’s free feels really odd. Thankfully I never “got” twitterific; too delicious-generation for me to get past an instinctive dislike, so I’m happily still refreshing the web occasionally and - far more importantly - routing people to my phone.

Perhaps the US / computer centricity that failed to recognise Jaiku as far more interesting than “a Twitter clone” is at work with the Twitterific fanbase, too.