Okay Geek Farm
Creator of Twitter for Mac and iOS, Loren Brichter leaves Twitter
Daniel Carey
Yesterday, the original creator of Tweetie Loren Brichter announced that he will be leaving Twitter. Brichter, who originally joined Twitter after the social media company acquired his personal application design company, Atebits, was responsible for creating the official Twitter application for iOS and Mac OS X. Fittingly, he announced his departure from the company via his personal Twitter account, stating that he will be “taking some time to figure out what’s next.”
Up until Twitter released their official application for Mac OS X and iOS, most users of Apple’s platforms favoured Brichter’s Tweetie. Seamlessly blending a mix of design elegance and simplicity of use, it wasn’t long until Tweetie became one of the most coveted Twitter applications available. As a follow up to Tweetie, Atebits released Tweetie 2 in 2009 which was just as successful as its predecessor.
Not long after Twitter decided to officially enter the application making space - which would later in effect severely damage a once thriving ecosystem of Twitter applications and developers - it announced that it had acquired Brichter’s design company Atebits and its respective properties. After a short while, Tweetie 2 became Twitter for iPhone and iPad, and the still in development Tweetie for Mac OS X became Twitter for Mac.
Interestingly, for most users of Twitter, up until the website redesign, application usage ran rampant. And while today, a good percentage of Twitter’s users access the service via an official application, I can’t help but feel there is a special place reserved for those that stuck it out with Tweetie over the years. I know from personal experience that I preferred using Tweetie over both the official Twitter website and applications. As to why I couldn’t say, nostalgia perhaps? But alas like most (and after much persuasion at the time by Okay Geek’s Brandon Davenport) I adopted Twitter’s official applications and haven’t looked back.
As a side note, hopefully Loren Brichter’s departure from Twitter will mean that he will once again develop some highly entertaining applications - I’m thinking something along the lines of Atebits’ Scribbles?
Header image courtesy of Aaron-A-Arts on Deviant Art.
