By 2013 was a great year for Twitter apps, with the likes of Falcon Pro and Carbon shaking up the landscape and offering beautiful, disruptive experiences. Unfortunately, those two apps were eventually hit by the 100,000 token limit Twitter imposes, forcing users to either wait patiently for new tokens to open up, download the official Twitter app, or get their Twitter fix elsewhere.
The list of decent options isn’t terribly large out there, so we tend to take notice whenever a new app enters the arena. That’s why we are eager to tell you about Talon, the latest app from the developers behind Sliding Messaging.
For $1.99, Talon introduces an application that looks like it was built with Android in mind from the ground up. Elements include a card-style UI, Google+-like profile images and sliding drawers, and more. The app features both phone and tablet user interfaces from the start, giving you a fully functional palette for those all-important 140 characters no matter which device you use.
The list of features is quite large, giving you a Twitter experience that is as customizable and functional, yet simple, as you need. Here’s a quick list of everything you can expect in this first release:
Twitter features:
– Live streaming support
– Support for 2 accounts
– View your timelines (main, mentions, direct messages, links, and pictures)
– Favorite users
– Update your profile picture, banner, location, and user description
– block, follow, and add users to lists
– Attach locations to your tweets
– And the list goes on :)Customization features:
– Extremely powerful developer theme engine (https://github.com/klinker24/talon_theme)
– Choose between either “Talon” or “Hangouts” layouts
– Choose from 3 beautiful base themes (light, dark, and pitch black)
– Custom text sizes
– Night mode
– Auto-Refresh options
– Custom notification settings
– And many other goodies in there as well!App Features:
– “Talon Pull” to be always listening for tweets/interactions
– Expandable, actionable, and dynamic notification system
– Full app popup
– Full emoji support
– View in-line Twitter and Instagram pictures
– View in-line YouTube thumbnails
– Native YouTube player
– In-app browser
– Complete landscape and tablet modes
– Advance to new pages in a “windowed” viewing mode
– Never leave your timeline with in-line replies, favorites, and retweets
– Hiding action bar
– “Do not disturb” mode
– Widget for main timeline
– DashClock Extension
– Google style pull to refresh for quick refreshing
Whew. Just looking at this list is exhausting, so you can only imagine how much work Klinker put into this thing. This is quite impressive for a version 1.0 release, which is echoed by all the 5-star reviews the app is already enjoying in the Google Play Store.
It’s unfortunate that great apps like these are eventually stifled by Twitter’s API limits, but the developer chooses not to think about that at this time — they’ll cross that “what to do when they reach 100,000 users limit” bridge whenever they come across it.
Until then, you’ll have plenty of time to secure a token if you’re interested in seeing where this app goes. Be sure to do that by buying it for $1.99 from the Google Play Store. Oh, and if you don’t mind being exposed to some potentially buggy betas, be sure to stop by their Google+ community and sign up to beta test the app.
How many more Twitter apps will I buy, only to have Twitter pull the plug on them? Zero.
Instead, I’ll just switch back to Twitter’s severely lacking native app, and spend far less time using it.
Here,here, the few I’ve tried, had their hand out in the end, not that I blame them for compensation of their work, but didn’t offer much of a change from the vanilla twitter app you get “stuck” on your phone.
Twitter should look at this barometer, if this many people want a different interface, those people may be looking for a new feed for it.
Just got the app. It’s nice! That and their evolvesms but my only issue is will this developer be abandoning apps after taking in app purchases. Sliding messenger Was cool and I paid to unlock something.
I am with @uniquename72:disqus on this. How much money should we be dumping into apps that will not function in a year or so. The fact that they will “Cross that bridge when they get to it”, scares me. It says that they are looking to sell 200,000 copies, and that when the token limit is up… too bad for us.
What I don’t understand is why don’t app developers just revoke tokens after a while?
Just because the token limit may eventually get reached (and it may not), doesn’t mean that the developer will stop supporting the app or even adding features. Especially if the developer has other apps and a fan/customer base.
I think Twitter should lift the limit in their API because from experience and observation, the majority of its power users don’t use the native app