The Tweet Lanes Twitter app originally launched back in July 2012. The interesting part here, the app launched with quite a bit of hype, both from the developer and from the users. The app touted itself as being “Pure Twitter” and “Pure Android” and there was little to disagree with as it was a solid app. The bad news arrived later on when the developer, Chris Lacy, decided to stop active development on the app.
We should point out though, Lacy didn’t just decide on a whim to stop development. He stopped active development because given Twitter’s 100k user token limit, he couldn’t see a real future with the app. As someone that had been a Tweet Lanes user, I would be lying if I were to say there was not some disappointment. Still, it was understandable. Lacy did say at the time that he would take care of bugs and other issues, however active development was done.
Since then the app appears to have been sitting. As of today though, we have a bit of Tweet Lanes related news — the app has been handed over to the open source community. Lacy has said that just because he is no longer actively developing the app, development doesn’t have to stop. In fact, as of today he has “released the source code for everything.” In addition to releasing the code, he has also committed to “syncing with the master branch and releasing a signed version of the app to the Play Store a few times a week.”
But from this point, he needs the help of the community. Lacy has put out a call to arms looking for volunteers. Specifically, he is looking for a lead dev and a community manager. Anyway, while we are not sure what this means for the future of the app, it does give a bit of a silver lining for those who found themselves having a difficult time finding a replacement Twitter app. Of course, we suppose with the abundance of available Twitter apps, it should have been fairly easy to find a replacement.
[via Chris Lacy on Google+]
