Is Tweetr the first mainstream Apollo application?

Tweetr, the Twitter client from John Ballinger that is built on Apollo hit a unique and fun milestone today; it officially got the same status as Twitterific. For those that don't use Twitter, I'll back up. When you update Twitter, it shows whether you updated from the web or from a text message. When you build your own client and use the web services to update, Twitter considers that as from the web. But early on, Twitterific, one of the more prominent clients (only for Mac) got a special deal that allowed you to show your status as having been updated by Twitterific. As far as I know, it was the only one that could claim that until now.

In order to have updates from Tweetr show as coming from the app, John had to prove to the people at Twitter that Tweetr was popular enough. He's been on a tear lately and has gotten a lot of press from some prominent bloggers as well as top billing on Mashable's Top 10 Apollo list. All of that has resulted in a lot of attention for Tweetr and Apollo.

Currently Tweetr is up to version .77. Because it was built with Apollo, it runs on both Mac and Windows (but requires the Apollo runtime). I like it better than Twitterific because of small details like the fact I can see the username and that clicking on the avatar takes me to the blog or website of the user. I also love the fact that when anyone uses the @username syntax, Tweetr creates a link so that I can jump in and see what the person on my list is responding to when they're talking to someone else.

Tweetr didn't take long to put together, and having it be cross platform is something that makes it stand out with Twitterific. It's one of my favorite early examples of Apollo in action because it's not an application you'd want to create inside a browser, but as a web developer, it's exactly the type of desktop application I'd want to create. With Apollo, I don't need to worry about learning the guts of desktop development, I can just focus on design and usability because I know the web technologies that go into it. With a service like Twitter that makes heavy use of web services and APIs, being able to leverage web technologies lowers the barrier to entry. Development for Apollo is definitely ramping up. Sites like ApolloHunter and ApolloApps have great libraries. Today I saw Brandon Ellis created a simple website monitoring application that I now have running at all times. All pretty simple stuff, but it shows that people are looking at the technology and finding interesting use cases. I think it's going to be an exciting year.