Falcon Creator Joaquim Verges Joins Twitter’s Android Core UI Team

I have been using Falcon since almost the first day that Joaquim first released it the the Google Play Store.  I have the original version as well as his latest, Falcon Pro 3 and love them both (although I now primarily use Falcon Pro 3).

I have tried many Twitter clients from the official Twitter app, Plume, Carbon, Seesmic, Talon and many more.  No matter the features they had they never appealed to me like Falcon did.  I always came back to Falcon.

Joaquim has had a long history with Twitter going back to his first Falcon app which was eventually sidelined due to issues with Twitter introducing tokens and a token limit to third party Twitter apps.  The limit was quickly reached in early 2012 due to heavy piracy and Joaquim had to reinvent the app to combat the piracy and allow actual paid users to use the app again.  He reworked a few things and released several updates to the app that greatly improved the usability and restored access to all of us legitimate paid users.  However, the token limit was still in place so the only people who had access to it were the early adopters.

Then Joaquim released Falcon Pro 3 to the Play Store as a free download with limited features and an in-app upgrade.  I was a little put off by the fact that if I purchased the upgrade and was unhappy with it that I couldn’t get a refund from Google but based off of his previous work and the results of the trial, I decided to just jump in and give it a shot.  I’m still running the upgraded version of Falcon Pro 3 and am glad I took the jump.

Today via Twitter Joaquim announced, “Guys, big news. It’s finally official. I’m joining the @Twitter Android core UI team!”

 

I’ll admit, when I first saw this I was a little bit upset.  Here was the one developer who has remained true to his audience and despite Twitter’s attempts to stifle him he was still going strong.  He maintained Falcon in an admirable way with frequent updates, new features, great support and an awesome app.  I felt like he was selling out to the devil and giving up the fight.

But then I started thinking about it and realized this is actually a great opportunity and shows a turning point for Twitter.  They have acknowledged what we fans of Falcon have been saying and are bringing in new blood to help fix their problems and revive their app.  Joaquim will be a driving force in making Twitter more like it should be.  Hopefully he can get Twitter to lift the token limit and allow third party developers to bring more innovation into what is becoming a stale offering.  Even if they don’t Joaquim can work from the inside to improve things within the official Twitter app.

And worse comes to worse?  We’ve still got Falcon.  Joaquim also posted on Twitter that he gets to keep Falcon as part of the deal and will continue to work on it on the side.

Here’s to hoping great things are coming!  I’ll be ready and waiting to try out the next several official Twitter app updates to see what he brings to the table!