Snippet: Two Texas Indie Developers Made It Big on Twitter a Decade Ago. Now They’re Fighting It ☇

Shared on May 30, 2023

Andrew Logan for TexasMonthly:

When Paul Haddad unfolded his laptop to start working after dinner on a Thursday evening in mid-January, he didn’t realize his life was about to be turned upside down. Haddad, the brainy cofounder of Tapbots, an award-winning software company that develops apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, clacked away writing lines of code in the living room of his home in Flower Mound. A text message interrupted him. “I’m having problems logging in,” wrote Mark Jardine, Haddad’s mild-mannered business partner, referring to Tapbots’ flagship product, Tweetbot. As a third-party Twitter app, Tweetbot provided a more personalized and curated experience by allowing users to customize their timelines with robust filters and view their feeds in reverse chronological order.

Most of this is a review for anyone following the decline of Twitter and the rather abrupt end of third-party app support, but there are quite a few fascinating data points.

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