Tweetie became Twitter’s official iPhone client after Twitter acquired its developer, Atebits.
Tweetie was created by Loren Brichter and launched as a Twitter client for Apple devices. Twitter acquired Atebits on April 9, 2010, partly because it lacked a polished, official mobile application for its growing service. After the acquisition, the iPhone version was rebranded as “Twitter for iPhone” and released in May 2010.
The app was more than a simple name change. Brichter joined Twitter’s mobile division, and the acquisition helped establish Twitter’s first major official presence on the iPhone. The related Mac version was later rebranded as “Twitter for Mac,” while an iPad version followed as Twitter expanded its mobile strategy.
Tweetie is also remembered for popularizing the pull-to-refresh interaction in Tweetie 2. That gesture later became familiar across many mobile apps. The distractors are other social-media tools, but they were not the Atebits app that Twitter purchased and turned into its official iPhone client.