Tweetbot, Twitter and the Sunk Cost Fallacy

18 October 2012

Tweetbot for Mac was released in the Mac App Store today. It’s priced at $19.99.

From the announcement on the Tapbots blog: > If you think about it, it’s not that expensive. Twenty dollars for a quality piece of software that you use every day? That has been the price point for quality utility apps on the Mac for years.

No arguments there. Tweetbot for Mac is a solid app that compliments my use of Tweetbot on iOS. I bought it because having a unified Twitter experience across my devices is worth the price.

But, honestly, the explanation of the pricing makes me nervous about the longevity of the app:

Once we use up the tokens granted to us by Twitter, we will no longer be able to sell the app to new users. […] We spent a year developing this app and it’s the only way for us to be able to make our money back and continue supporting it with updates in the future.

After the success of Tweetbot for iOS, building a Mac version must have been a no-brainer for Tapbots. But Twitter changed the rules half-way through development, putting a ceiling on the potential growth of Tweetbot for Mac. Now Tapbots need to recoup their development costs and find a way to support the app for the foreseeable future.

I don’t see how it necessarily follows that charging a higher one-off price gives Tapbots the ability to support Tweetbot for Mac long-term. Making a living selling apps on the Mac App Store is already difficult enough. As a customer, I’m nervous that Tapbots will lose interest once the Twitter tokens run out and the money dries up.

Tapbots have sunk a year of their time into building a product that depends on Twitter. Whether they manage to recoup that cost is one thing. The more interesting question is whether we, as Twitter users and Tapbots customers, should continue to sink more of our money and time into such a volatile platform.