Some surprising news hit twitter tonight. If you’re a twitter junkie on your iPhone, you’ve probably heard of Atebits, the makers of Tweetie/Tweetie 2. These are the creations of Loren Brichter, who proudly announced that his company was recently acquired by twitter.
Tweetie set some high benchmarks for design and simplicity of an iPhone twitter app. Tweetie 2 is still one of the most popular twitter apps (I still prefer SimplyTweet though) for the iPhone. With this acquisition, Loren will now start working with twitter to release an iPhone/iPad version of twitter. There is also a desktop version of Tweetie too. We can expect that the official twitter app will be free once details are worked out.
From the Twitter blog:
We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve entered into an agreement with Atebits (aka Loren Brichter) to acquire Tweetie, a leading iPhone Twitter client. Tweetie will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and made free (currently $2.99) in the iTunes AppStore in the coming weeks. Loren will become a key member of our mobile team that is already having huge impact with device makers and service providers around the world. Loren’s work won the 2009 Apple Design Award and we will eventually launch Twitter for iPad with his help.
Congrats to Loren and we look forward to more of his excellent work!
[@atebits]
