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Tweetsville Developer Ed Voas Goes Back to Work at Apple

Developer Ed Voas has recently convinced a slew of people to download his twitter iPhone application, tweetsville. The new “humble twitter client” offers users an elegant, simple approach, and all the hard work Voas has put into developing the application, has paid off.

In the land of twitter iPhone clients, elegant simplicity is the best approach. Tweetsville manages to combine most of the high level features twitter users are looking for, with a very pleasing, snappy interface. Initial reaction amongst users has been extremely warm, and early buzz surrounding the new application has surely helped increase downloads. However, amidst all of the excitement, Ed Voas, the developer behind tweetsville, has sold the application and taken a job with Apple.

Apple is extremely strict with what employees do in their free time, so developing and maintaining a third-party iPhone application wouldn’t be tolerated in the slightest. Meaning, Voas needed to find tweetsville a new home. “Because it’s Apple, I’m under strict agreement not to have any type of side projects, etc. so it was important to find someone to care for Tweetsville from this point forward. It’s too cool of an application to just let it drop,” Voas explains at Fiery Robot.. And he’s right, his concerns for getting tweetsville into good hands are definitely founded. These days, any application that manages to break through an initial barrier of users — arguably the most particular — deserves attention.

Voas sold tweetsville to Tapulous, which has taken over maintaining the application and rolling out new features. Even though Tapulous and co-founder Mike Lee have been going through some harder times, Tapulous has managed to stay focused and keep moving forward. The only friction that may be caused by the recent acquisition of tweetsville, is Twinkle, Tapulous’ in-house iPhone twitter client. The two twitter applications could in theory be sold side-by-side, and Voas himself explains that tweetsville will have a free ad-supported version, as well as the paid version. But what sense selling both applications makes for Tapulous, we’re not sure. Twinkle hasn’t been accepted as warmly by the twitter community, and tweetsville is simply a better user experience.

As for Voas’ new employment, Apple is extremely aggressive with new hires, especially people that they scout out. “I can finally say that I’m officially back at Apple starting today [Nov.10.2008]. It’s been weeks in the making, but it finally materialized late last week,” he explains.”This time I’m working on iTunes instead of the OS group. Definitely a different type of thing than I’m used to — I’m more a framework/API type of guy — but I think it will be fun nonetheless. Especially since I’ll be working with one of my friends that I used to work with there.”

Tweetsville’s success may in fact help shape Voas’ future decisions at Apple. Twitter is directly tapped into the backbone of our culture. The service, as simple as it may seem, conjures up emotions with many of its users, and as a whole can be pretty addictive. By proving that he knows how to develop the user experience most people are seeking, Voas’ influence is sure to be a welcome addition to the future of iTunes. Whether he be working on the framework or flow of the application, iTunes is overdue for an overhaul. Seeing as how iTunes is the central hub that connects Apple’s ecosystem, every decision is of major importance.

Even though he struggled night after night making sure the seemingly simple, yet diversely complex twitter client “just worked,” Voas explains that tweetsville was truly a marvelous application to work on. We wish Voas the very best of his luck as he closes one chapter in his life, and opens the next. May we see the fruitful efforts of his diligent skills shine through in a new version of iTunes!

tweetsville – iTunes link
visit – tweetsville.com
visit – tapulous.com