There’s been a flurry of articles discussing the demise of Sparrow and what may have caused it.

Many blame Google for snapping up good talent and then letting their original projects die. There is definitely truth to that as the guys behind Sparrow knew what they were doing from a Usability and Technology perspective. Sparrow was both elegant and performed well. It was so good that it has become my primary mail client on the Mac. So I can see why Google wanted them.

But today AppCubby points the blame squarely at the economics of the app store:

From our experience, a $2.99 app in the App Store needs to hover around #250 in the top paid list to sustain two people working full-time on the app….And that’s the Sparrow problem, break-even was not sustainable. They had to find a way to turn a profit — lot’s of profit — to provide their investors a decent return.

So he concludes with:

Given the incredible progress and innovation we’ve seen in mobile apps over the past few years, I’m not sure we’re any worse off at a macro-economic level, but things have definitely changed and Sparrow is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. The age of selling software to users at a fixed, one-time price is coming to an end. It’s just not sustainable at the absurdly low prices users have come to expect. Sure, independent developers may scrap it out one app at a time, and some may even do quite well and be the exception to the rule, but I don’t think Sparrow would have sold-out if the team — and their investors — believed they could build a substantially profitable company on their own. The gold rush is well and truly over.

This has been my experience as well. For that apps that I’ve released in the app store, you really can’t make much of a living off them, let along build a business around them, unless you can consistently hover near the top. And most of the revenue is short-lived with a big spike in the beginning.

Maybe it’s time for developers to return to the world of web-based SaaS and subscriptions and give up on the app store goldmine?

One new web service that I’ve really been enjoying is iDoneThis. Every day at the same time it emails you and asks “What’d you get done today?”. You simply reply to the email and whatever is in the body the your email becomes your entry for the day. It then adds your entry to a web calendar so you can go back and review what you accomplished. You can use it for a lot of purposes. I mainly use it as a diary/gratitude journal (don’t laugh — Oprah says a gratitude journal will make you happy and I think she’s right). Anyway, what caught my attention was this at the bottom of each of their daily emails:

iDoneThis is a part of the slow web movement. After you email us, your calendar is not updated instantaneously. But rest up, and you’ll find an updated calendar when you wake.

They actually advertise that they are slow. I’m not sure what the “slow web movement” is, but oddly I find it comforting. Slowness gives the impression of attention like a slow craftsman or a slow meal. In this world of realtime twitter and the 24 hour news cycle there’s something I like about the slow web movement. Maybe they will start a trend and everyone will slow down a bit.

The soft overcomes the hard. The slow overcomes the fast. Let your workings remain a mystery. Just show people the results.-Lao Tzu