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Twitter’s iOS developer Loren Brichter announces his departure

Chris Oldroyd — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 08:50:31 +0000

Twitter’s iOS developer Loren Brichter has announced via a tweet on his personal account that he has just served his last day with the company. Loren Brichter was the lead developer for Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for iPad.

Today was my last day at Twitter. Taking some time to figure out what’s next. Really proud of the way the team has grown.

Twitter purchased Loren Brichter’s Atebits company back in April last year in order to release its own Twitter application. At that time Atebits had its very popular Twitter app called Tweetie 2.0; which was basically converted to the official Twitter iOS app. It was later extended to the iPad as a universal application. It is not known where Loren Brichter is headed, all he will say is he is taking some time to figure out what’s next.

Source: electronista

Twitter for iPad dev fixes The Daily’s UI in 2 hours

Rene Ritchie — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 23:30:03 +0000

Developer Loren Brichter, best known for developing Tweetie as Atebits and now the official Twitter clients for iPhone, iPad, and Mac decided to spend an evening doing what News Corp didn’t previous to launch — fix The Daily‘s horribly implemented Carrousel UI.

Evening project – The Daily, less slow: http://t.co/DVmLKHO 60 fps, full AA, physically correct reflections, (different stacking style).

Hopefully he shares his techniques with The Daily’s development team but it just goes to once again show what a difference a great iOS developer can make, even against a huge (old) media empire.

Are you still using The Daily? Video after the break!

[@lorenb via Daring Fireball]

Official Twitter for iPad will be the best Tweetie yet

Leanna Lofte — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:50:54 +0000

Twitter recently purchased Tweetie, the widely popular iPhone and Mac Twitter client, and the iPhone version was renamed Twitter for iPhone. The big question on everyone’s minds has been if there will be a “Twitter for iPad” any time soon. The answer is Yes!

Loren Brichter, the designer of Tweetie and now employee of Twitter, has confirmed that Twitter for iPad is coming to the iPad, it’s coming soon, and he’s very excited about it. He claims that “the goal is to exceed the Twitter iPhone app in the iPad.”

Tweetie also has a Mac client that has been seemingly neglected for almost a year. Users have expected an update for quite a while now, but no such update has arrived. Loren has now spoken and promises to get back to working on Tweetie for Mac in the coming weeks. He had to put it on hold after accepting the position at Twitter to focus on the release of Twitter for iPhone.

TiPb is very excited for Twitter for iPad and an updated mac client. What about you? Are you looking forward to some Tweetie goodness on your iPad? Are you a MacHeist user who as been patiently (or impatiently) waiting for the promised Tweetie for Mac update?

Sound off in the comments below!

[ars technica]

Luck, Quality, and Marketing: Tweetie’s Loren Brichter Talks Development and Success on iTunes U

Rene Ritchie — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:48:27 +0000

A short time ago we mentioned that Standford’s iPhone Application Programming course was being made available as a video podcast via iTunes U. In addition to two lectures a week, the course offers special Friday sessions, one of which recently featured Atebits‘ Loren Brichter (iTunes link), the developer behind popular iPhone (and now Mac) Twitter client, Tweetie (see our review).

Brichter, though he worked for Apple on the first generation iPhone, had no actual app development experience when he set out to make Tweetie, yet the app has become the most successful iPhone — and mobile — paid Twitter client in terms of both revenue and user base, hitting the #6 position in the App Store at one point. How’d that happen?

At the beginning of the lecture, Brichter shares his App Store daily revenue graph (sans actual dollar amounts) for Tweetie, which he says he made simply because he wasn’t satisfied with any of the existing clients. Focusing on a mix of functionality and simplicity, and an Apple-like experience, Brichter credits luck, quality, and marketing for Tweetie’s success. Part of that marketing, after a small initial sales spike due to friends and family, was the semi-facetious introduction of PEE (“popularity enhancers” like a flashlight and fart sounds) that garnered a lot of media attention and quintupled growth for a while.

Other growth occurred when Apple featured Tweetie on their main page, but the biggest growth-booster — also thanks to Apple — was when Tweetie 1.3 was rejected by the App Store due to the term f**kitlist just happening to be a trend on Twitter’s search results that day. Press jumped on it and users bought it up. (Apple reversed their decision later that same day).

The final two growth spikes occurred after Twitter itself began highlighting Tweetie as part of their sidebar factoid promotion, and after the press surrounding the recent introduction of Tweetie for Mac.

Being part of the Application Development course, Brichter also touches on some of the things he did from a programming standpoint to boost Tweetie’s performance.

Looks behind the app development curtain, especially in academic settings with some back-and-forth questions and answers, are rare enough in the iPhone world that anyone interested should definitely consider checking out the whole session.