Tweed 1.0 to be a paid app

With more than 190,000 downloads, it is safe to say that Tweed has a fair number of users, which as you can imagine could put quite the toll on creator Pivotal Labs. Though Pivotal created Tweed as an experiment to orient themselves with webOS, it has quickly become a Pre user favorite (and this blogger’s own primary Twitter client). After some discussion, Pivotal has decided that version 1.0 of Tweed will be a paid app in Palm’s updated ecommerce-enabled App Catalog.

To justify charging for what was once free, several new features will be added to Tweed 1.0. Photo uploading will be enhanced and will no longer rely on the email workaround they’ve used in the past. Twitter photo clients will also be expanded, with your choices now including TwitPic, TwitGoo, TweetPhoto, yFrog, and Posterous. Tweed’s dashboard notifications have been reworked to be more useful, you’ll now be able to view more info on user profiles (such as larger pictures), send photos in direct messages, and more.

Users who have downloaded the current free version of Tweed (0.9.16) will be able to keep right on using it without any worry. Once the paid apps Catalog is available, the new version will be available for download and will install as a whole new application due to the upgraded App Catalog’s structuring. This unfortunately means that your settings will not be transferred from your older installation.

Tweed will be priced at $3.99, but in celebration of the revamped App Catalog’s launch (and to ease the weight of the transition on your wallet), Pivotal has decided that for the first few weeks they’ll only be charging $1.99 for the new version of Tweed. And if you’re worried that you’ll be forking over cash for what you see as only a few upgrades, take heart that Pivotal has several new features in the works for future versions of Tweed, including theme support, landscape mode, and Flickr uploads.