The man behind one of Twitter’s best third-party Android clients has been hired by Twitter itself. Joaquim Vergès (no relation!), developer of Falcon Pro, tweeted today that he is going to work for the company…
The Verge – The developer of the best Android app for Twitter works for Twitter now
I know a lot of people might be optimistic about this. Arguably the developer of the best Twitter app on any platform, is heading to Twitter to work on their Android app. That’s good news right? Maybe. But I’m not optimistic.
I’ve seen some of the most talented engineers of our time disappear into the Twitter Vortex and be smashed to pieces on the rocks that are their insane overheads. A little birdie (badum-tsss) tells me that over 70 iOS Developers build just their iPhone app. A large chunk of those work solely on the tools and processes required to allow that many people to work on one app. I know some people use and like their iOS app, but that’s an insane amount of people to build something that to me is just not that great. As a reference point: Tweetbot, my iOS Twitter app of choice, has just two people working on it. Two. Falcon Pro, my favourite Android Twitter app, was one person. One. Both apps are, in my humble opinion, miles ahead of Twitter’s own apps.
Maybe Twitter will magically turn things around. Maybe they will slim down their teams and remove the crazy overheads they operate under. Maybe they’ll drop their obsession with A/B testing every tiny detail and just make a great app. Maybe a year from now I’ll be using their Android app and love it. Maybe Australia will win the FIFA World Cup in 2018 too! Stranger things have happened…