One of the ways I am approaching the crowded iPhone Twitter client space

http://motionobj.com/blog/the-conversation-view-in-simplytweet

by hboon • 17 years ago

6 6 17 years ago

hboon3• 17 years ago

There are many Twitter clients on the iPhone at the moment. Most of seem to be focused on implementing the API and offering integration to other services. Some are doing very well and are very impressive.

While I'm also doing some of that, I'd like to experiment in a different way, that of building new features. The conversation view, while it is not a totally new concept (it is available in a similar form in the Summize page, and the current Twitter search page), doesn't exist yet on the iPhone clients and it's pretty interesting how much you can do in the backend to churn out just a view of a conversation.

Digress a little: I've been working full-time on iPhone applications for the past 3 months but have only started selling a few weeks ago (a delay of 3 months due to the paperwork blackhole!). And it's been a huge challenge to break into the market and break even, but nevertheless an interesting experience.

As I mentioned in the article, I have a few ideas (for features) in my mind which I'll be experimenting with. If anyone of you have any ideas, please feel free to share them and/or discuss/comment on what I have done.

sidsavara• 17 years ago

This is interesting, why an iPhone application rather than something that can be perhaps web-based?

I am working on (and by "working on" I mean, I created some messy code 5 months ago and then abandoned it but cling to the dream that I may one day finish it) something similar, but wanted a web based UI - I have the same issue whether it is on a mobile client or at my desk. I want a twitter client that is smarter than a linear display of what's going on - and instead figures out the context of tweets (like replies and retweets) and intelligently gets me that context

It looks like you are trying to solve that issue with replies, kudos to that.

hboon3• 17 years ago

Being an iPhone application partially solves the selling part of the equation. You still need to market and have a good product, but sales and delivery is done for you, at the cost of 30% revenue and somewhat unpredictable release schedules.

This particular functionality is actually a web service though. I built this running on a server and the iPhone client talks to the service. This provides some flexibility in terms of release schedules and most importantly works around the default Twitted rate limit. There is just no way a standalone Twitter thick client can do this without hitting the rate limit all the time, making the feature useless.

It's interesting you mentioned retweets though, I haven't thought about that. One thing I'm looking into is the timestamp, @names and some herestics based on commonalities between tweets. I come from a search engine background, so mining text and relationship is always interesting to me.

Why did you stop your work though?

wallflower• 17 years ago

Not to scope-creep but:

Have you thought about virtual Twitter follower groups (e.g. groups of people you don't actually follow but still like to overhear and/or summize search terms actings as groups)?

Also, have you considered implementing visualizations like these: http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeo...

One of the ways I am approaching the crowded iPhone Twitter client space

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