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An Open Letter to Loren Brichter, Developer of Tweetie

Dear Loren,

Let me state this straight up: I don’t want to sound like one of those creepy fanboys that daily knock at your door asking for a “BETA VERZION PLZZ”. These are just my thoughts, hoping that you won’t be disappointed by my position.

I understand that making a good app requires time. A lot of time. Guess how much time an high-quality app such as Tweetie would require. But the situation is getting a little bit awkward.I’m talking about Tweetie for Mac and the long-awaited 2.0 version which, in your words, was due to be released after Tweetie 2 for iPhone. You said Tweetie for Mac was upcoming back in September. It’s four months ago.

Now, please define “upcoming” Loren, because I don’t get it.

Really, I do understand that you don’t have a 30+ people working team and that you’re an independent developer, but you can’t treat the people who purchased Tweetie for Mac like this. They believed in your product, I still believe in it and I’m sure many other people do, but this is just wrong. Promising an upcoming huge update and then not giving a single hint about it. No news about the development, no replies to the users who daily ask you on Twitter about it - nothing.

I agree with the “don’t promise. just ship” policy, but the problem is you actually promised something months ago and never shipped anything. Not a single blog post about it. To me, it seems like you just don’t care about the situation and prefer to cover this buzz with silence. This is wrong.

And you know why? Because customers want to trust the person they’re paying. It’s not about “I give you money, you give me updates”, it’s about believing that the person you gave part of your money to will care about you and your trust in the future. I strongly believe that an application isn’t just some lines of code thrown up together, it’s so much more. A good application can change a life, I dare to say so. I would have never been able to achieve 10k Twitter followers if it wasn’t for Tweetie. It’s become part of my workflow, so seamlessly integrated that I just can’t imagine how can I work without it now.

But you’re making that fantasy a real thing, Loren. I’m finding myself looking for a new Twitter client for Mac everyday - I still haven’t found a good one. That’s because I still trust you, man. It’s just that I don’t understand this way of acting.

Glad to be proven wrong.

Your truly,

Federico Viticci

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