Dabr is probably the best mobile web interface for Twitter available today. Described as ‘m.twitter on steroids’ by its users, Dabr is a labour of love by three chaps from England.
It started back in 2008 when David Carrington, mobile developer hobbyist extraordinaire left this comment on the then SMSTextNews website, Mobile Industry Review. I replied and then we took it offline. From there, ideas started firing back and forth right up until the end of the year.
Three months later, in January 2009, I signed on as official strategic advisor and since then, we’ve grown the service massively. As of August 2011, the open source code has been downloaded 27,000 times and, even as far back as 2010, our user numbers and stats have been fairly impressive (which reminds me, I have an update from 2011 to put up on the blog).
Originally built for alpha-numeric keypad devices, such as the Nokia N95, Dabr now caters for screens big and small, with touchscreens and without, sometimes even stretching to devices that aren’t even phones!
Being open source means that guests can add their own code to the story and Terence Eden‘s contributions were so damn good that David asked him to become the third member of our team. It’s only a part-time project (we all have day jobs) so the more help we can get, the better. Terence’s contributions have been fantastic. In fact the last overhaul (when we switched servers) included a whole host of features that were mainly based on his awesome developments and iterations.
Thanks to our successes on the user number front, we had to introduce adverts to help pay for new (and better) servers. Fortunately, the users that we’ve done this for have been both supportive and loyal throughout this time and our numbers have stayed steady. Ads are in, the users are happy and the service still lives on.
Next time you’re on Twitter, have a look for the tell-tale sign of ‘via Dabr’ at the end of someone’s tweet, that means they’re using one of the best free web-based Twitter apps available today.
Give it a go, you might like it –
Related links:
Dabr
The Dabr Blog
Dabr on Twitter
The Code
Terence Eden’s Dabr Posts
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In the press:
Channel 4 News [link broken] but references can found on the Dabr Blog and Mobile Industry Review
One Forty Review Page (4.5 out 5)
Mr Phillip Schofield is a fan and user
‘Service of the Week‘ by mjelly
UberMedia using Dabr’s code c/o The Next Web
First Second Twitter app to integrate Twitter lists
Also published as a page for future reference —