The outrage on Twitter today regarding Tweetbot for Mac‘s pricing point of $20 is actually misplaced. It’s not Tapbots‘ fault, it’s Twitter’s fault.

I’ve been using Tweetbot since it first debuted on the iPhone, then on the iPad and finally when they started letting users try out their alpha version for Mac OS X. It may not be the best or the most complete Twitter client out there but it’s definitely the most suitable for my needs and tastes. When I saw the amount at which they decided to price the app today, I wasn’t shocked or surprised, I simply recognized that the time for the first victim of Twitter’s asinine hate towards third-party apps has come.

It’s easy to understand: because Twitter has decided to introduce a user limit on third-party apps, Tapbots doesn’t have the potential to capitalize on their development over time as more users would buy their app at a smaller price. Instead, since they already know the maximum amount of users they’re going to have, they needed to price their app in a way that that maximum amount of users would be enough to cover the costs of development (and some). And because of that, everybody loses.

What really disturbs me is Twitter’s position on this matter. If it wasn’t for third-party apps, Twitter wouldn’t be where it is today. It’s true they need to fuel their website’s traffic to monetize their platform but to piss on the group of people that made it possible, it’s just dumb. For me, once my Tweetbot beta version app’s token expires, I’ll probably stop using Twitter on a regular basis (I loathe their website and I still don’t know if my use of Twitter justifies buying a $20 app) and just use Mountain Lion’s native features to post and receive mentions/messages.