What’s Your Preferred Twitter App To Use?

Frank — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:00:31 +0000

I’ve been on Twitter since 2008 and I really enjoy using it and interacting with others. When I realized I was using Twitter constantly throughout the day I decided to use a Twitter app. The two I heard about at the time that were the most popular were Tweet Deck and Seesmic. Still to this day, those are the two most popular Twitter app’s for the desktop. Granted, there are a ton of other apps for cell phones, but these two apps in particular are the one’s with the most recognition and popularity. It has led me to the question, which of these two Twitter apps do you prefer using?

I recently had a conversation with Loic Le Meur on Twitter who’s the founder of Seesmic about writing a post on this topic. We both agree that trying to compare the two is like comparing apples to oranges, but I wanted to focus more on the features, interface, and usability of the two apps. I’m going to be fair in my opinion so that if you choose one or the other, you will have a good outlook on both. You may not even want to go with the two more popular apps and go with something completely different. That’s fine, but I’m still going to stick with these two for this matchup.

Tweet Deck – Founder Iain Dodsworth

-Customizable interface: you can change the colors to whatever preference you choose.

-Use the app in a single column: you can choose to have the app show multiple columns with mentions, DM’s, searches, etc. or just have it in one single column and use the scroll bar to switch to the others.

-Pull in updates from other sites: such as LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook.

-Easy to use utilities: place your cursor over someone’s profile pic to have the option to retweet, reply, DM, or check out settings in regards to their tweet.

-Simple: by far the easiest Twitter app to navigate around. All of the icons are there in front of you. You don’t need to go searching for anything.

Seesmic – Founder Loic Le Meur

-Desktop app and Seesmic Look app for beginners: having the ability to choose from two different types of apps gives you options. Try them both out and use what you like.

-Window is too large: didn’t see a way to move the app into one column like on Tweet Deck. It causes for some clutter and takes up too much of the screen. Hopefully in upcoming versions they can incorporate this feature.

-Seesmic Look: it’s more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. As compared to the desktop app which is pretty plain, Seesmic Look brings a more colorful and appealing feel to it.

-Real Time Trends: on Seesmic Look when the app first loads you see a real time view of the latest trends. They constantly are changing which is a really neat feature to see top headlines.

Splash Icon: When you open the app, it loads a splash icon onto the screen which is rather annoying because it takes longer for the app to load. I’m just not a fan of it, but it may not bother other people.

Live Twitter Feed: an auto update of new Twitter posts to your feed would be nice for Seesmic Look. It’s on the desktop app, but not on Seesmic Look. Instead it lets you know when there are new tweets and you need to click the notification for the new tweets to show. I believe this should be updated.

Ping.fm: having bought this company is a huge acquisition and they have it incorporated into Seesmic to update all of your social networking platforms at once. This was a brilliant move!

This is my breakdown of the two applications. Obviously from my review, Tweet Deck is still my preferred choice. No disrespect to Seesmic because it plays big and offers quite a lot to the user, but I think Tweet Deck brings more of what I want and is simpler. Both apps are easy to navigate around, but I’m really into customization and usability when it comes to anything I use. What are your thoughts? Which app do you use? Do you agree or disagree with my review? Would you add or subtract anything from either list?

Social Tech Zone » loic le meur

What’s Your Preferred Twitter App To Use?