In the past, we've been asked if we planned to charge for Tweed. Until recently, we hadn't made a decision. Tweed began as an application we developed to learn Palm webOS, and it grew into something we started to depend on, so we decided to release it to the App Catalog.

At this point, Tweed has a thriving user base and continues to grow in its maturity and capabilities. However, this does come with considerable costs to Pivotal Labs and we can't indefinitely subsidize the entire cost of development. So, we've decided to make Tweed a paid application in the App Catalog.

We are committed to continuing to develop and support Tweed. Charging for it will let us keep bringing you new features, like the ones in the 1.0 release.

Existing Tweed users can continue to use the current version, (0.9.16) and you can still grab a copy until the paid apps are available; it will not timebomb and we're happy for you to keep using it. However, it will be removed from the App Catalog when the paid version replaces it. Hopefully you'll find the new features compelling enough to upgrade. (Unfortunately it will install as a new application, so you will have to re-enter your accounts and you will lose existing timeline markers and bookmarks. Sorry, this is a consequence of the new App Catalog and we have no influence over this.)

For Canadian users, Tweed will continue to be free until Palm launches a commerce enabled App Catalog in Canada. (This will be true for new Palm Pre markets as well.)

Features

There will be a variety of new features available in the initial 1.0.0 release of the paid application.

• true, direct photo upload (no more email)
  • TwitPic, TwitGoo, TweetPhoto, yFrog, Posterous
• new notifications dashboards
• full-screen view of user profile image (tap user picture on user profile scene)
• preference for number of tweets on fetch
• ability to change password
• show number of tweets in user profile
• direct messages can include photos

Roadmap

While we have lots planned for Tweed, some items of note include:

• themes
• landscape support
• bit.ly / j.mp url shorteners
• Flickr upload support
• more...

Pricing

Tweed will normally cost $3.99. However, for the next few weeks, to help ease the transition, we will offer Tweed for the discounted price of $1.99.

We thank you all of using Tweed. While we know some of you will be disappointed that Tweed will be a paid-only application, we hope you will enjoy the new Tweed.

0.9.16 of Tweed is now available in the App Catalog.

Changes:

• loading spinner/scrim has been replaced with spinner/cancel button (like web browser app)
• Tweed will auto-retry connecting to Twitter on failure response from Twitter API (this has been recently causing Tweed to hang))
• option to cancel active request by tapping cancel button; tapping refresh will retry (instead of having to re-select timeline from nav menu)
• shake for retry and refresh

Shake

We've added support for the accelerometer shake events. If you shake your phone while on a timeline:

• if loading (Twitter is taking a long time), this will force a retry
• if no active loading, then refreshes (same as hitting refresh button)

So, you could always force a retry by tapping cancel, then refresh, but we figure you can vent some frustration by shaking the phone.

We know many users have been very frustrated by Tweed lately. Tweed has had problems connecting reliably to Twitter. While other clients, be it mobile or desktop, have also had problems connecting to Twitter, Tweed does seem to be more frequently affected.

The conundrum is that it is intermittent and seemingly arbitrary. Some users are just fine, others seem to never have a working Tweed. For ourselves, we occasionally have problems with Tweed as well, but not nearly as often as some users, which has made diagnosis and resolution hard.

These problems seem to have started after the recent DDoS attacks on Twitter. Before that, Tweed seemed to connect fine and we haven't changed our integration. Perhaps something changed in Twitter's API implementation that is at odds with Tweed -- we don't know.

At the very least, please know we are actively working on it. While we are also working on making Tweed functionally better (true photo upload, more photo viewing options, full size profile pic viewing, ...), we are devoted to make Tweed as reliable and as fast as we can.

As always, you can reach us vai @tweed on Twitter,or via email at tweed-support@pivotallabs.com.