Selling Twitter Clients Built on AIR

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I was reading about Twitter’s business model today (or lack thereof) and found out that Twitterific, the Mac only desktop Twitter client that was first on the scene is now charging $15 for the application. Charging for Mac applications isn’t new (there seem to be a lot more free Windows applications) but I was shocked that Twitterific had enough people paying $15 to use the application when there are so many good alternatives out there. Dave Winer even suggested this could be Twitter’s business model.

So when are the people building Twitter applications with AIR going to start charging? Could this be the first AIR application to make money? Are you guys waiting for the release of the runtime before starting to monetize what are a bunch of cool applications? Between Tweetr, Snitter, and Spaz, there are some first-class Twitter clients out there built on top of AIR. If the strategy of monetizing Twitter clients works out, those three would be in a great position. I think it would also be a good boost for AIR.

Go forth, make mooo-nay from AIR! Also, I’m trying something new with comments so I’ll have to approve them. Sorry about the pain.

[tags]Adobe AIR, Twitterific, Twitter, Spaz, Snitter, Tweetr[/tags]

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  • Peter

    I am still using a C#/.NET flash wrapper for my app because selling/supporting an app created w/ beta software leaves me with an uneasy feeling…

  • http://www.trajiklyhip.com/blog Aaron West

    Hey Ryan, you didn’t mention twitterAIR, my attempt at using some of the cool features of Flex 3 and AIR to create a Twitter desktop client. I’m not charging for my app and have no plans to do so. For me, it’s about not having time to put the necessary effort into constant updates and support that would be required to charge for the applications use. Furthermore, building the app was more of an experiment and learning process to see what I could create quickly with the betas and Flex 3 and AIR. For me, AIR not being an officially release product yet has nothing to do with it.

    BTW, you can check out twitterAIR here: http://www.trajiklyhip.com/blog/index.cfm/twitterAIR. It still requires the old AIR Beta 2, but if you don’t want to backpedal from Beta 3, you could just view the screenshots and blogged info about what cool stuff is being done in the code.

    Cheers mate.