Finally Twitter Remembers It’s Own Tweetdeck
It finally seems that tweetdeck has been remembered by twitter 6 years after it was created.
In a survey sent to some power users today, Twitter asked which features they would most like to see added to an “advanced” version of Tweetdeck. After that, respondents were asked if they’d be willing to pay for a more full-featured version of a client that otherwise has been mostly forgotten.
Twitter acquired Tweetdeck for $40 million back in 2011, at a time that was particularly fraught for developers building mobile and desktop clients that competed with Twitter’s own. Just two months earlier, Twitter’s then-head of platform Ryan Sarver had warned developers to stop making Twitter clients and focus instead on complementary apps and services.
In that respect, Tweetdeck being bought was probably preferable to having its API access shut off and dying a slow death. But those who hoped Tweetdeck would be the basis for a more robust Twitter client for power users would end up being sorely disappointed.
While Twitter never officially killed off Tweetdeck, the product has languished from lack of development over the last several years. It got a small update in late 2012, but since then has seen features slowly disappear or fail to keep pace with features that were added to Twitter’s official clients. First mobile Tweetdeck clients disappeared, and later the native Windows client was discontinued.
