HELLO AGAIN
Boy do I have a lot to share about the last five years.
Today’s story begins in 2020. For some time, I had been flirting with a particular idea for a side project: an alternative Twitter client focused only on your output. That is, no timeline. Just your posts. I wasn’t interested in competing with the official client, or the many excellent third-party options. I would lose. And nobody would care.
Admittedly, this wasn’t an original concept. There were options on the web to address this niche. But, I thought a native mobile option could be compelling. And — in fact — so did Twitter!
Bear in mind, these events took place when they were openly building v2 of the Twitter API. It was legit. With minimal hustle, I was connected to a PM. This was his intro:
I heard you were contemplating building a new app on the Twitter API and had some questions / concerns that you wanted to address before feeling confident doing so. We'd love to help however we can, especially as we continue to build v2 of the Twitter API and have a lot of ability to adjust our plans to meet the needs of developers like you.
Are you up for sharing a bit more about what you'd like to build and what questions you have?
Happy to find time for a phone call, too, if you'd prefer to chat that way. Thanks in advance!
Upon receiving clarification, he was enthusiastic:
Thanks for the details! The concept sounds intriguing and definitely something we'd like to support you in building.
We then had a really good call. My one sticking point concerned pricing. I had experience with a paid API dependency. I knew for a partnership to be sustainable, the payment plan had to be based on reality. He got that:
On your pricing question, the honest answer is that there's not a firm answer yet :) However, our thinking on how we might adjust pricing for the API is focused more on usage and how a developer charges moreso than size of an organization. This is a challenge we face today as a result of having a mostly one dimensional pricing model built for large enterprise B2B companies: that developers building apps that are sold for, say, $2.99 a month in the app store have no viable way to obtain higher access. What we imagine is likely drawing the line between B2C and B2B as an initial guide.
To be more succinct about the principle we have in mind here: we want to align incentives so that success for developers = success for Twitter. That only works if we have flexible options for different developer models and circumstances.
Does that help?
Exactly.
The pay-as-you-go model is what made — more than anything — Dark Sky an indie dev darling.
I was optimistic, but I clarified that until pricing has been confirmed it would be unwise to commit to the project. He understood.
Awesome. Can't wait to see what you come up with!
That’s where the conversation ended.
One year later — still no confirmation. Then shortly later — this happened. And the rest is unfortunate history.
Over the 2023 Christmas holidays — after a three year itch — I finally scratched. The trigger was discovering TootSDK. Freed of the burden of the boring work connecting to Mastodon, I quickly prototyped the original vision. But, of course — like any self-hating indie — I couldn’t resist perfecting the pitch. Yesterday, I finally relented. I announced it to the world.
Tusks is now available on the App Store.
Thursday, May 2, 2024