Today I ran into a Google+ post that talked about the petition to allow Falcon Pro to go beyond the 100k tokens limit enforced by Twitter. What does this 100k tokens limit means? New users of Falcon Pro won't be able to access Twitter... for a Twitter client this means DEATH. Since Falcon Pro is my favorite Android Twitter client, I went to the site and signed the petition.
I then launched Tweetdeck to check my hardsoft Twitter list. This list features hardware and software companies I'm interested in. I didn't had to scroll for long to see the main reason why Falcon Pro hit the 100k tokens limit.
“For the numbers, Play Store tells me 40k users. Piracy is unstopabble, nothing I can do to prevent that.”
The Falcon Pro users can be broke down into 40k legit users and 60k pirates. Already I can't understand $500+ smartphone owners that refuse to purchase great $1 app (most Android users around me and some cheap iOS users). So this is beyond my logic to take the risk of downloading a pirated copy (that is likely infected by an Android virus) of an impressive €0.79 app such as Falcon Pro.
These pirates are genuine morons. They not only don't pay to use Falcon Pro but also prevent Joachim Vergès from getting new legit users.
What is the best option for the Joachim? Implement his own authentication server that enable the legit user and blocks the pirates. If it's possible, have the pirates use "Falcon Pro pirated" tokens and revoke them with each software update... turning the pirated version into a time limited trial.
I don't see Twitter removing the 100k limit for Falcon Pro. But they could do something that is badly required: token expiration. Allow the developers to set an expiration on the tokens created by their app. So a token that was unused for n weeks should be pruned.
I wish Joachim will be able to find a viable solution soon. The best option would be for him to turn most of the pirates into customers. Bonne chance Joachim.