Yesterday, it was announced that Weave newsreader is shutting down on March 14. The news was sudden, and at the time, no reason was publicly given. However, Windows Central has been in contact with the developer behind Weave - Arash Emami – for years now and he reached out to us with details on the decision.
First and foremost, the end of Weave is not about leaving Windows Phone. This situation is not the same as American Airlines or Bank of America. Instead, Emami is heading to work full-time at LinkedIn. As he reminds us, Seles Games – who makes Weave – was mostly a one-man show.
Second, Emami wanted to convey his gratitude to you, the community, in addition to recapping the app's history:
"Seles Games was formed in 2010 when the Windows Phone platform was first announced. Microsoft was awesome in getting us pre-release SDKs and prototypes so we could have Weave ready for the U.S. launch of Windows Phone. When WP launched, and for a good while after that, Weave was the top ranked paid news reader in the U.S. store, and was well-reviewed through various designs and iterations for many years after that."
"It was an incredible experience to develop for the platform, to meet with evangelists, platform owners, and many other great great people from Microsoft and later Nokia as well. We could have never imagined the level of support we would received from a huge company like Microsoft. They have enormously talented people who really care about helping developers make great products."
Some highlights:
- Flying out to Redmond to take part in a UX workshop as part of the LG app campaign
- Multiple Microsoft L.A. startup events, hackathons, and hands-on product demos
- Partnering with Lazyworm Apps to launch Weave on Windows 8
- Being asked to take part in OneNote's API launch, working with the Office team and even getting to record a sweet commercial for it
- Every single email or tweet from a Weave fan telling us how much they loved the product, how much they use it. Reading messages like that, those moments were awesome
Indeed, I remember covering Weave back in 2010 when George Ponder reviewed the app for our site. Weave was always a highlight of the many newsreaders available, and it is sad to see the company and product go.
Oh, and if you feel burned about spending money on Weave, Emami tells us directly:
"Regarding refunds of the paid app: we highly recommend that anyone who paid for the app to request a refund from Microsoft. We don't know the official policy for requesting a refund, but the best method we found was to go here then click on the 'Chat' button".
Change is always hard, but we wish Arash Emami all the best at LinkedIn (maybe he can fix that app, ahem). We thank him for his early support of the Windows Phone platform and we were glad to promote his app during that time!
