Twitter Buys Tweetie for iPhone

There have been a lot of talks about how Android is going to be a big challenger to iPhone for the years to come. But there are other companies that are taking advantage of both platforms and are expected to have more audience than either Android or iPhone OS users. Twitter is one of those companies. Most people seem to have finally realized that there is some value in tweeting. It’s true that some are still talking about their lunch and other useless topics, but Twitter has grown leaps and bounds from last year, and it is taking steps to grow even further by acquiring Tweetie for iPhone.

Tweetie was arguably the best Twitter client around, and Twitter has hit the jackpot by picking it up. Considering that Twitter is expected to offer the app for free, one can expect Tweetie’s market-share to grow even faster. But the move has some serious ramifications for third party developers. There is no way to sugarcoat this for them. They all competed and Twitter chose a winner. If Tweetie for iPhone becomes available for free, will people spend $3 or more on third party Twitter apps?

Twitter has indicated that it is going to fill the gaps to provide a more complete ecosystem to its users. So not only we could see Tweetie to come to other platforms, Twitter may go ahead and buy Bit.ly and Twitpic. That is going to be bad news for some of the developers who invested a lot of time and effort to bring users to Twitter. We all saw what happened with Twitter search niche after Twitter bought Summize. The acquisition of Tweetie could lead to some of those third party apps to disappear.

Twitter’s goal is to grow and deliver a more user friendly experience to its users. Purchasing Tweetie seems to be a very smart-move towards achieving that goal on mobile platforms.

Your take: has Twitter delivered a fatal blow to other Twitter client companies by picking up Tweetie?