The Story so far…

Originally TwitQuit was developed in 2010 just for use between a few friends. It allowed us to track who followed and unfollowed us based on a script that run four times a day and sent us email alerts. It then evolved into allowing us to view these statistics on weekly graphs, view who we follow that doesn’t follow us and vice versa; see who follows us that we don’t follow.

During the beginning of 2011, I designed and implemented a responsive design and opened it up to the public. The response was amazing and bloggers wrote about the free service all over the world.

I then gave my first attempt of an iPhone and iPad app. Again, another amazing response from users.

As more and more users signed up to the web service and downloaded the apps, I noticed the server was performing slower. My quick fix was to move to a new, better, faster (yet more expensive) server to overcome the problem.

It’s always been a side project. It’s never been utilised to generate traffic or revenue. All domain names, web hosting and web/app development time has all been personally covered out of my own pocket.

The problem.

Moving the website and app connection to a new server overcome the slowness issue for a short time, however the numbers of users kept on growing. The more users the slower the server became and as of recently, our valued users are now crashing the server completely.

“Buy a new server” I hear you say… I’m afraid not. The website is free to use and the apps are not generating enough cash to splash out on new hardware.

Disabling website access.

As you may have noticed, the website access has been intermittent over the last few weeks. As our iPhone and iPad apps are at its lowest denomination in price, my priority over the user’s app access is greater than the free website access. Therefore, I regret to inform you all that the website access will remain closed from the end of this month and any automated scripts which check your followers and email you reports on a daily basis will be switched off.

iPhone/iPad app continuation.

Over the last few weeks, during the temporary website access, the iPhone and iPad app access and functionality has improved greatly. Therefore, as the website access is closed off, I will continue to monitor user’s access levels from the paid app channels. My efforts will continue on bringing access natively to devices through the app stores.

Glimpse into the future.

Although the website and server downtime has consumed a lot of my time, I have been working hard on delivering an update to the iPhone and iPad app which addresses a few speed and iOS compatibility issues. This will be submitted to Apples approval process over the next few weeks, despite the announcement of iOS7. To keep in-line with the look and feel of iOS7, I won’t only be redesigning but also redeveloping the app from the ground up for a big 2.0 launch later this year.

I’ve had a huge amount of requests to release an Android version. Oh ok, you’ve twisted my arm, I’ll do it… but it will be tied in with the 2.0 launch to keep consistency across platforms.

The only thing left to say is thank you. Thank you for using and supporting Twitquit. You’ve been epic. All your Blogs, Tweets, Re-tweets and ‘Likes’ really make a difference. You can still continue to show your love on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr so you can keep an eye on future updates.

Thank you for your co-operation.

Kind regards,

#TwitQuit