Favorite Twitter Apps: TweetDeck, TwitterFon and SocialScope
by Volker Weber
While I often use the Twitter.com web interface, I have come to like three applications. TweetDeck on the Mac or PC, TwitterFon on the iPhone, and SocialScope on the BlackBerry. Can't really say anything about SocialScope, because they don't want me to. You will find screenshots on Google though. TweetDeck is an Adobe Air desktop application, and I found it too "big" at first, but now like it because it gives me a fast overview, searches for replies and allows me to follow replies to their original posting. TwitterFon is very clean and easy to use, and gives me nice ways to follow conversations.
Comments
I know there are hundreds of Twitter-Apps for the iPhone out there and it's strongly a matter of taste which one of them to prefer, but have you tried Tweetie? I really like its feature to do (and save) searches on search.twitter.com and its slick interface.
I like TweetDeck, but I think it takes too much screen estate.
When it comes to the iPhone, I'm also on Tweetie (like Henning).
On my MacBook, I currently use Lounge most of the time, but still fall back to Twitterrific (on the iPhone as well). And I'm eagerly waiting for Beak, which is not yet public.
Sometimes I use EventBox as well, which tries to combine numerous social services (including Twitter) in one app. They want you to pay for their Beta, though -- and I'm not really sure if the development is making sufficient progress.
On my office PC (Vista) I use Twhirl which requires Adobe AIR as well.
I like Twitdroid on Android and also Tweetdeck on the Mac.
For the latter I have to say though, that the lack of support for horizontal mouse scrolling and the large unadjustable columns are an unfortunate combination.
I use a mixture of Twhirl and Tweetdeck on my Mac - Twhirl permanently down the right side of each of my OSX spaces showing the latest tweets from the 900 odd folks I follow (my 'Twitter river'), and Tweetdeck usually minimised with searches displaying via Growl notifications.
On the iPhone I've tried Twitterific, Twittelator, Twitterfon etc but have settled on Tweetie (like a few others here by the looks of things). It is a ¢1.79 purchase but for me is worth every penny - it supports multiple accounts (something I wish Twhirl etc did) and does a fabulous job of bringing the best iPhone UI touches to Twitter (flick a tweet sideways to reveal the reply/retweet, profile and favourite options for example) plus showing trends and nearby Twitter users.
I still see a lot of folks using the Twitter web UI and struggle to see why - even other web UIs like slandr.net and ping.fm seem to do a much better job.
I like Tweetdeck, but it's a bit of a RAM hog if you you keep it running overnight. Just this morning my iMac was nearly at a standstill because Tweetdeck hat an RSIZE of over 1GB.
