http://www.sharify.it/

I don’t make any assumption on the model, something instead that the developer of TwitterDeck has made, since he doesn’t control at all the service he relies upon.

The message that passes here is “develop with AIR and you are going to make money (for sure)” like the former implies somehow the latter.

I would assume that for TweetDeck to receive funding they must have some plan for generating income. [I may be wrong about that of course].

I’d expect to go to some kind of “standard vs Pro” model; where the standard is free, but the Pro version costs something.

Don’t assume that today’s model is the same as tomorrow’s model.

Your post headline was “Making Money with AIR”. To me that insinuated that AIR was a contributing factor in the funding.

@Ryan @James

Would there be a Tweetdeck without AIR? I suspect yes. Entrepreneurs tend to find a way to fill needs.

Does AIR make building such an app easier than, say, C++ or Java? Perhaps. But, such a discussion has nothing to do with making money. I think Emanuele stated that point nicely.

@Emanuele
There are commercial Twitter clients; so someone somewhere is making money off Twitter. It is possible to build a business model that rely upon free services.

This guy got funding, kudo on him and maybe who has invested the money has no clear idea of what (s)he dropped in.

Regarding AIR, I see a lot of Twitter apps done with it, but any capable programmer with half a brain can create a multiplatform native version without needing a runtime in a week or two; we used to make multiplatform applications far before AIR arrived, claiming that TwitterDeck would not have existed without AIR is a bit simplistic. You also say that by making the application online “one has not actual control of the services you use”…. but this guy, AIR or not, do not control Twitter at all, nor the its runtime, a double risk rather than an opportunity.

Without AIR as a viable platform for creating the service that Tweetdeck offers, the project (if it had been made) would have been developed as an online Flex application. An online Flex application would then be directly competing with an online Twitter – and if you’re a 3rd party competing in the same medium as your source, you’ve really got to pull out the stops to stay ahead of the source in terms of functionality, and you’re at a disadvantage because you don’t actually control the services you use.

By creating your application in AIR you’re reducing these factors, and you’ve more chance to survive – which makes more sense. Without AIR, Tweetdeck probably would not be around.

But hey, that’s speculation. What’s important, I think, is that this is an AIR application that has got itself funding after starting out without any, which proves that as a business model, it’s not impossible.

The main point is that AIR makes apps like Tweetdeck fairly easy to build, especially for creative Flash/Flex people, so they get to do pretty innovative things. It’s making it easy for smart people to do things that I think is nice about AIR, so that’s why I think this is a success story.

There is a lot of business skill that goes around getting funding and/or marketing a product succesfully. These things are often more important than the technology of choice for that product.

I would expected the use of AIR to have had a negligible affect, if any, on the funding.