Twitter apps have become a tough business these days, especially once Twitter imposed restrictions via ‘tokens’. This artificial wall basically punished popular apps by limiting how many customers could download and use the Twitter service via third-party systems. The latest company to throw in the towel is Rowi, built by the guys at Hidden Pineapple.
First coming onto the Windows Phone scene in early 2011, Rowi quickly became to the go-to Twitter app for many people. With its deep black and minimalist design, push notifications and all-around general smoothness, it was for a long time a shining example of Windows Phone development. Later, a Windows 8 version appeared as well.
But it was around August of this year where problems started cropping up with the token limit. We reported that the free ‘lite’ version of the app had to be pulled and it was not looking good for the paid one down the road.
Today, the axe has dropped on both the paid Rowi app and the Windows 8 version. In an official statement from Hidden Pineapple:
“Unfortunately Rowi has hit up against the user limit imposed by Twitter on traditional third-party Twitter apps so we needed to pull it from the store(s). The user limit is on Twitter's end so new Rowi users would be unable to use the app after downloading it. This is far from what we wanted or expected at any point in the nearly three years of Rowi's existance but we have little choice to move aside and see what experiences Twitter and others can bring to the new Windows* ecosystem.If you've used Rowi on any device, thank you! You've helped to make it a pretty decent Twitter experience on a platform mostly ignored by Twitter until fairly recently. If you already have Rowi installed it will still continue to work but there will be no future updates. #RIPRowi”
As a result Hidden Pineapple is discontinuing development and support.
To Erik Porter and Nathan Heskew, the minds behind Rowi, we salute you and wish you the best of luck!
Daniel Rubino is the Executive Editor of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft here since 2007, back when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, Microsoft Surface, laptops, next-gen computing, and arguing with people on the internet.
