End of the line for Carbon & Graphite on webOS

It’s been 364 days since Carbon launched in Palm App Catalog. A day and it would complete a full year. A couple of weeks from our launch a very popular Twitter client “Tweed” from Pivotal Labs was ending its era and with a tiny cooperation with us they recommended their users to move to Carbon while we offered discounts for a month for users to move. While that was an exciting moment for us, it was a sad time for Tweed users as we went through their tweets, they used that app for more than a year. Right at that moment I thought to myself & hoped this day would never come for Carbon, it was sad. And now, I’m at that position.

What is sad about this is the fact that Carbon started as a personal project, before even having a Tablet version, a Windows Phone, or an Android version. It was an app that I was writing for my own use as I wasn’t happy with the free Twitter apps that were available at the time on App Catalog. As you know due to Geo-Restrictions of the App Catalog I couldn’t buy the quality apps, so I wrote mine. Posted a few screenshots with #webOS hashtag on Twitter, and what do you know! An awesome tweep (he’s an Android user now) picks it up and retweets it, at the time I wasn’t aware of the webOS community, I just loved my Pre phones. And it just started from there. It became a serious project after launching it.

Maintaining a Twitter app is real commitment that needs to be financially feasible unless it’s a free app done for fun of it. When I took Carbon seriously I put targets, and read the webOS scene deeper, there was a great potential, big promises from webOS folks on the growth of user base and handhelds out in the Market. And we waited for a long time. Nada! And then was our Tablet version “Graphite”. And then was Leo. Oh Leo!

The reason we’re discontinuing “Carbon” on webOS is because we don’t want to have it become an app that is not updated, broken as it has been in the last couple of months. Twitter API changes regularly and that at times could break apps and call for regular updates to keep up with the API, that from a side, and keeping an app that we ourselves don’t personally use anymore? That is tough.

As we discussed this with our friends we’ve been getting calls for open-sourcing Carbon. While that is a great idea, we’ll have to plan that as maintaining an open-source project is something that we haven’t done before and our code has to get polished for developers to make good use of. Our code is a year old, written on a discontinued Framework that is “Mojo” by Palm. While it’s a very skeptical and doubtful about the whole open-sourcing we’re open for talks, you’re a kick ass developer on webOS? Want in? Have ideas and want to guide us go open-source? Hit me at saleh[at]dotsandlines[dot]com.

It’s hard to say this, but this should be it for Carbon on webOS. Carbon could not be anything of what it is on other platforms if it wasn’t for the great webOS community that carried it for the past year and specially every one of our friends who alpha & beta tested Carbon and made the app what it was at the time of launch. Thanking each of you. Thanking every awesome webOS user who bought our app, kept it patient with our bugs and put up with our shortcomings, thank you all!

The app and its tablet version Graphite is now taken off of the App Catalog. Time to turn the page.