Tweetie Creator Loren Brichter’s Next Act: Atebits 2.0 To “Make Fun And Useful Things” [Like Games]

Tweetie creator and UX prodigy Loren Brichter has just announced a new project, Atebits 2.0. Atebits was the name of his previous company that was bought by Twitter in 2010. He announced as well that his first project will be a game.

In November 2011, Brichter left Twitter to work on other projects. Now we finally know what he has been up to, and it seems to be a return to his previous endeavours.

Brichter invented the pull-to-refresh interaction in iPhone apps as well as other popular UX mechanisms. For example, users could swipe on a tweet in Tweetie 2.0 in order to reveal a series of actions. That interaction became widely popular as well.

Twitter owns a patent for the pull-to-refresh interaction, but the company has stated that it wouldn’t use it defensively thanks to the Innovator’s Patent Agreement. That is why even Apple started implementing pull-to-refresh in iOS 6 Mail’s app.

Brichter was the driving force behind Twitter’s first apps. The first Twitter app on the iPhone was a rebranded version of Tweetie 2. Later, Twitter released its own iPad and OS X apps with most of the development led by Brichter. Yet, Brichter’s work has now disappeared from Twitter’s apps with recent redesigns. The iPhone and iPad apps were redeveloped from the ground up, and the OS X app has been neglected for over a year.

Even though Atebits was acquired by Twitter, Brichter uses the same name once again. It looks like he is legally allowed to do that. Tweetie wasn’t his only app. He has worked on messaging app Textie and on OS X painting app Scribbles.

According to his personal Twitter account, his new game has been in review for 11 days.

Here’s the full blog post:

In 2007 I left Apple and started my own company. In 2010 that company was acquired by Twitter. Today I’m giving it another shot. Say hello to atebits 2.0.

My goal is simple. Make things. Fun things, useful things, new things, improved things. Some may be popular, some may be failures. But I love creating, so that’s what I’m going to do.

The first thing will be an app and that app will be a game. Can’t wait to share it with you.

Let’s wish him good luck.