Comments
One of my friends said he accessed Twitter only through the Twitter site, both on the desktop and on the mobile. He had never used any Twitter client. He said he was not comfortable with other clients and also did not want to trust them with his Twitter password - even if it meant through OAuth.
Then came the news that Twitter had acquired TweetDeck. Now at least, he was glad that his password would stay with Twitter if he used TweetDeck. He was ready to try out TweetDeck both on the mobile and on the desktop.
Just when he was getting comfortable with TweetDeck, came the news that Twitter would be closing down TweetDeck apps. My friend had a consolation - the Web version would continue, which meant he could still use TweetDeck as he usually did - through the Web.
There were rumours all along that the guys at Twitter were planning to kill TweetDeck. The mobile apps had not been updated for quite some time, and even the desktop client and the Web client had not seen much improvement. Twitter had recently come out with major updates for both the iOS and Android versions of its own app and seemed to think that maintaining two different clients was not exactly feasible.
My friend is one of the rare persons who swears by Twitter as well as its clients. Most of my other friends in Twitter don’t use Twitter directly. They are more comfortable with the clients that come with extra features. And despite Twitter throttling third party clients with API call limits, new clients keep on appearing. The latest for Android - Robird - is a rage now. The ‘fight’ is now between Robird and Falcon (the latter has had major issues with Twitter API limits recently). Plume, Carbon, Twicca, UberSocial, and Hootsuite too compete for attention with some great features.
The growth of Twitter is also because of the third-party clients. Though Twitter says the API call limit is only to enable smooth functioning of Twitter and avoid crashes, developers from the third-party clients are hoping that Twitter will ease the limits. That’s exactly what users are hoping would happen, as the limit throws silly errors often while using third-party clients.
>dinakaran.rengachary@thehindu.co.in
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.