Seesmic acquired by HootSuite | Hacker News Reader

Seesmic acquired by HootSuite

blog.seesmic.com

44 pointsjmduke12 comments

From the blog on HootSuite's site

> Consumer users of Seesmic encouraged to explore new tools, apps and features available at Twitter.com

Guess that's the side effect of these new Twitter partnerships, also a very round-about way of saying they're shutting

http://blog.hootsuite.com/welcomes-seesmic-users/

That really sucks. I've been using Seesmic for Android for more than a year now because they haven't made any radical changes that completely break functionality like other Android Twitter clients have done in the past. Guess it's time to start trying out replacements.

Don't bother trying replacements if you expect them to be around for long. With the new api rules 3rd party clients are essentially dead. They'll limp on for a while, but no one is going to be pushing development resources into a more restricted system for long.

Boid's still very much in beta, but it's the only one I find useable these days.

Tweetdeck used to be great, but they went steadily downhill after the Twitter acquisition (removing features, etc.)

Steadily? More like falling off a cliff! The old Tweetdeck can still be downloaded with minimal searching, and even with some brokenness with regards to Facebook and supporting a defunct network (Google Buzz), it's still leaps and bounds better than the Twitter-owned abortion.

The recent updates to Plume have made it pretty great on my Nexus 7

I don't get it. HootSuite has a free plan, right? Are they saying this so that they don't hit the user limit with free accounts, or getting rid of free offering, or ...?

Twitter and HootSuite have entered into a "partnership", there are some clients Twitter have deemed "useful" or in some way beneficial to the service as a whole, as such these partners get special treatment. I'd imagine HootSuite doesn't have to worry about client limits and things like that, however in return they have to help Twitter drive consumers back to Twitter.com/Twitter owned apps. That's my speculation, HootSuite are killing off Seesmic and their "consumer" options because Twitter asked them too.

HootSuite aren't in the dreaded upper-right quadrant, though.

Whacko-nutjob theory alert:

Could Twitter have possibly financed this operation, using HootSuite as a surrogate for shutting down Seesmic? Could this be the beginning of a series of "accuclosures" in the Twitter client world?

Seesmic's always struggled. From the founders blog in July

I have been struggling with Seesmic for 5 years, pivoting 4 times and not reaching success yet, still trying hard (we just killed a bunch of products to focus on one, Seesmic Ping and monetized it with hundreds of happy paid customers already and a nice growth). A big change.

http://loiclemeur.com/english/2012/07/40-and-5.html

Ugh, I switched to Seesmic after Twidroyd became bloated crap (they even went so far as to remove useful features), and Seesmic has suited me fine so far, as it's simple, straightforward and clean. I might just give up on Twitter altogether if I can't find a non-shitty client for it.

Can someone tell me what that 3rd party change was? I missed that boat, all I heard was that something was going on with Twitter clients but I don't know exactly what Twitter did.

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