DISQUS

louisgray.com: louisgray.com: Designing the Perfect Twitter Client Is Impossible, But Tweetie Is Close

  • Justyn Howard · 2 months ago
    Tweetie desktop allows for saved searches, it's just not easy to figure out. Once you search for something, click the star icon (grayed out) and it will then appear in your searches (and will light up like the other areas when there are new results).

    Also, I understand Tweetie 2 Desktop will support Twitters group/list funcitons as well FWIW.
  • Louis Gray · 2 months ago
    Justyn, thanks for the notes. In this case, I am referring to Saved Searches you already have set up in Twitter. Brizzly recognizes them right away, as does Tweetie on the iPhone. I assume when Loren looks to update the desktop client, this can be added.
  • Justyn Howard · 2 months ago
    Ah, that makes sense. I started using Tweetie right away, so I never played with saved searches on Twitter.

    In any case, I agree - Tweetie is close. They need Groups and PC client and I think they could capture a lot of the market. Not sure if some of the elegance though isn't because it started it's life on a Mac.
  • Pete · 2 months ago
    Louis, what do you think of twitscoop for the trends aspect?
  • Richard Cunningham · 2 months ago
    It's interesting that even those clients that do have versions on multiple platforms, have different features on the different platforms. Seesmic for instance is very different on the web and desktop. I've taken the view with FriendBinder is that you should never be unable to access an interface to it, so we support the web (modern browsers + IE6) and the mobile web (anything half decent, the iPhone, Nokia, Sony, Android etc.) and that the features should be the same, so we use the same code base.

    Also I wonder why none of these clients seem to support showing of threaded replies on Twitter, I've found it very useful since we implemented it on FriendBinder:
    http://blog.friendbinder.com/2009/08/threaded-t...

    I notice that Tweetdeck and Seesmic already support Facebook. Brizzly sounds like it's going that way too, so I wonder if Tweetie will too.
  • AlexHammer · 2 months ago
    Fantastic post. Great summary and analysis.
  • mrshl · 2 months ago
    I dig Echofon on Firefox, and they have an iPhone and Mac application. From what I've seen, Tweetie is probably a better combo for the Mac/iPhone but I use windows. I've not seen any dedicated Twitter client I enjoy more than Echofon on Firefox. I use it on my iPod touch, too, and it's serviceable (with Read it Later integration!). But I've so far been unwilling to pay $4.99 for the pro version so that I can sync my Firefox and iPod accounts.
  • sgreenblatt · 2 months ago
    Louis, great post!

    Ever since it was released, Tweetie has been my primary desktop client. It is really close to an ideal client for me, with a few exceptions:
    - Groups, like everyone else...
    - DM - I like the conversation view, but I would really like to be able to see DMs segregated into incoming and outgoing, so it would be quick and easy to see if someone is trying to start a DM conversation, or if another tweet is added to an ongoing conversation.
    - Tweetshrink - I use Tweetshrink quite frequently and a few clients provide the ability to click a button to shrink the tweet currently in the composition box.

    I'll continue to skip around trying new and updated clients, but for the foreseeable future, I'll spend most of my desktop Twitter time using Tweetie.

    Seth
  • Daniel J. Pritchett · 2 months ago
    I'd been using free clients (twitterriffic, TweetDeck, Hahlo) and resisting the call of premium for months now. The Tweetie hype last week led me to check out the sweet online help and I was sold.

    Every time I use it I'm amazed at how it's the most responsive, comfortable, no-frills client out there. It's far more comfortable to browse Twitter via Tweetie than via any desktop client or web site I've seen thus far. If I were an Apple fan (oh crap!) I might say that Tweetie has given Twitter the Apple treatment in terms of slick UI and ease of use.

    Oh jeez, don't let my Dad the MS fan read this.

    The fact is Tweetie gets the "let's pick up where we left off, seamlessly queue up the next page of Tweets without making me click through every twenty messages, and tap the top of the screen if you want to jump to [now] stream-browsing interface JUST PERFECT. Thanks, whoever wrote Tweetie. You earned my $3 and more.
  • Mark Essel · 2 months ago
    I have also used a number of clients and web portals to Twitter. Although I rarely use multiple accounts. I'm a single soapbox sorta guy, and filtering + groups should help replicate the intimacy of private or smaller accounts (it's an implementation detail in my mind).

    For the iPhone tweetie outscores halho (web interface) and tweetdeck for my usage. It's fast, easy to use, and doesn't hamper my communication experience.

    Desktop wise I'm a tweetdeck user. The groups and easy to control interface are a powerful way for me to receive and send (in that priority order) messages.

    I used briefly but wasn't won over by Brizzly, or a fairly solid web client I can't remember at the moment.

    Friendfeed is sometimes my super Twitter client as well, but has lost some of my confidence due to the purchase.
  • Tris Hussey · 2 months ago
    I would also keep an eye on the new version of Nambu (www.nambu.com). It brought a lot to the Mac client fray early on, but was stymied by memory leaks and other issues. The newest version looks a lot like Tweetie and multiple colums are set to return in later betas (groups are supported). The app launches very fast and supports multiple accounts ... I think there is huge potential for it.
  • devnet · 2 months ago
    hootsuite for the win!
  • Rainer Falle · 2 months ago
    Hi folks! I just released the first public preview version of SharedMinds Desktop.

    It is a native Windows Twitter client with some unique features like a powerful view engine, an integrated web viewer and flexible sorting and filtering. It supports twitter search, multiple accounts, retweeting, a single inbox and cross account tweeting. It features the popular MS Office Look & Feel and supports many different visual styles. More features like groups and media sharing are planned for future version.

    A free download is available at http://bSix12.com/smd/ Feedback welcome!
  • Mykl.biz · 2 months ago
    I appreciate your thoughtful and firsthand comparison of Twitter clients, and share your need for multiple account support. So far, I'm impressed with how little Tweetie drags on my CPU, even after I load a large number of accounts.

    Tweetie displays a modest to moderate number of Twitter accounts in a compact window, with a tidy interface. Unfortunately -- depending on your window size, and limited by your display height -- a longer list of accounts will disappear below the bottom of it's Main Window, botching it's interface.
  • Gals3m · 2 months ago
    You completely ignored Yoono desktop version (http://www.yoono.com/). It does a great job for twitter, myspace and facebook, and also gmail and other. For chat, I think trillian is still the best (also myspace, twitter, facebook, and other)
  • disqusbeta · 2 months ago
    love brizzly and web version of twitter, thorough analysis, thanks Louis...
  • Vinko · 2 months ago
    Louis, from your post it sounds like you had not use the iPhone Twitter client SimplyTweet.

    I too had used many Twitter clients over the years. At the moment my Twitter client of choice on the Mac is TweetDeck. Except when I have to manage multiple Twitter accounts and/or schedule tweets, I will use CoTweet.

    On the iPhone I was using EchoFon (formerly TwitterFon) until TweetDeck released its iPhone client, that was until I came across SimplyTweet.

    SimplyTweet has all the functions of Tweetie 2 an more. That was when Tweetie was still at version 1.xx.

    You can see my review of SimplyTweet in my blog.

    http://blog.vinko.com/2009/09/29/review-simplyt...