Popular iPhone App TweetDeck Gone Missing From The App Store

by editor on Nov.09, 2009, under TechCrunch

A couple of days ago, I checked if there were any updates for the applications I have installed on my iPhone, and one that was identified as having published a more recent version in the App Store was TweetDeck, the popular Twitter client for desktop and mobile. Strangely, the update failed and I just gave up trying to install the upgraded version after a while.

Now it seems the TweetDeck iPhone app is MIA from Apple’s App Store completely, barring new users from installing the app on their phones and existing ones to upgrade to a new version.

Apparently, last Friday when the upgraded iPhone app was pushed, too many crash reports resulted in Apple pulling the tool from the store and holding out for a bug-free version. An updated version was quickly resubmitted that same day, prompting TweetDeck community manager Richard Barley to tweet that he was going to try and push for a fast return of the (free) app on the store.

No such luck, however. A couple of hours ago at the time of this writing, Barley sent out another message saying that he was ’sorry’ and felt ‘frustrated’ because the updated app still hadn’t found its way back onto the App Store.

Of course, Curpertino isn’t exactly at fault here, since it’s the responsibility of TweetDeck’s (admittedly small) team to assure that submitted apps aren’t bug-ridden, which was apparently the case with the first update they had pushed last Friday.

But it goes to show exactly how much control Apple has over the whole process, being able to drop applications from the store in a heartbeat and then forcing developers to sit and wait until they find time to review updated versions, with no ETA ever given.

According to Louis Gray, these are the features the new TweetDeck iPhone app will boast:

The new version reportedly added Facebook support, which had previously been limited to the desktop application, as well as video uploading, integrated with 12seconds.tv, a new Landscape compose mode, trending topics support, a “Nearby” option that showed when Twitter friends were close, thanks to the iPhone’s built-in GPS, and the option to open new links in Safari.

Also, here’s a video of the upgraded app, which will hopefully be reinstated by Apple soon:

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