

One of the ways I am approaching the crowded iPhone Twitter client space - hboon
http://motionobj.com/blog/the-conversation-view-in-simplytweet

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hboon
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
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.

~~~
hboon
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?

~~~
thwarted
_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._

Interesting. A web based application doesn't need delivery, but I wonder what
kind of marketing you could get by leveraging the app store to market your
product, but actually deploy it on the web. In other words, put a simple app
on the app store that is merely a shortcut to spawning the web browser and
taking you to your page. Could be free or paid, depending on how people
respond to it. You could do more frequent updates too, without having to go
through the app store, since it is web based. Do any apps do this currently?

~~~
hboon
If it's a web app, and you don't need/want the app store distribution, then
you probably want to build it as a web app and market it as such. The app
store itself is not much of a marketing tool unless you are already very
popular.

But then if it has no app store presence, how would you charge the user? I
might build a few more features around the web service approach to take
advantage of the rapid deployment benefit you mention, but probably not as a
full blown web app. I don't know of any app doing the latter, but I'm not
surprised if there is.

------
wallflower
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...](http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeography/atlas/topology.html)

