Tweet this!

danalwebb — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:21:07 +0000

Twitter has become an integral part of our social media lives, marketing strategies, and business objectives. We have multiple accounts, hundreds of followers to watch, Twitter trends to track, hashtags to follow, and a frequent need for continuously updating search results.

As such, getting by on the limited feature set available via Twitter.com is difficult at best. Enter the desktop application, a third-party piece of software that you can install on your computer to interface with Twitter and get more out of your microblogging activities.

Now that Twitter is older than a toddler, you have a variety to choose from. From apps for groups, Mac and PC specific clients, and apps that let you do a whole lot more than tweet, you can use this guide to help you find the desktop client that’s right for you.

*Note: all ratings are based on 5 stars

Power Users Only

Destroy Twitter: Certainly not your most sophisticated Twitter client, but definitely above average and packing a few hidden nuggets. Destroy Twitter is a single account, single column app (but does allow for multiple columns in the expanded view), that’s clearly not for power users who have multiple presences to manage. It does, however, have a simple yet powerful groups feature that supports groups of users or groups of multiple keywords. The only problem is that accessing those groups can be a challenge.

Mashable rating: 3.5 stars
Hit feature: user-created themes that you can download to skin the app
Common concern: better features are hidden

TweetDeck: Our current head-to-head winner in the desktop space, TweetDeck’s most recent updates improve upon the column experience to include a report spam button, recommended people to follow, better video playback, auto-suggest for usernames, yFrog integration, and unlimited columns. Oh and it also happens to have a complementary iPhone app that syncs with your desktop columns. Nice.

Mashable rating: 4.5 stars
Hit feature: sync with the iPhone app
Common concern: groups need a little fine tuning

*Disclosure: TweetDeck partnered with Mashable to create MashDeck, a branded version of the software.

Seesmic Desktop: This really is the everything Twitter app. It features support for unlimited Twitter accounts and columns, a smattering of URL and photo options, hands down the best Facebook integration we’ve seen, and unlimited saved searches. We’re really in love with Seesmic Desktop, and it seems to be evolving at record pace.

Mashable rating: 4.5 stars
Hit feature: fantastic Facebook integration for comments and likes
Common concern: system resource hog

PeopleBrowsr: The desktop version is just as complicated and feature-rich as the web app (you’ll need to log in to the website to find the download link in lower right-hand corner). With PeopleBrowsr you get a full-featured Twitter app that is bloated with features like export, sort by Twitter name or number of followers, map or gallery views, stats on stacks (which are like columns), an aggregate view of tweets across stacks, simultaneous posting to other services, quick access to a number of different filters, and so much more. And we haven’t even begun to discuss the integrations with every popular social site on the planet. Even though the light mode is a little easier, this app is better left to extreme power users. Plus all those features seem to really slow it down.

Mashable rating: 3.5 stars
Hit feature: export
Common concern: information overload

Mac Apps

Mac Lounge: This app is incredibly appealing for its dead simple, single column interface and respectable feature set. We, of course, love the multiple account support, but also appreciate saved searches, quick access to view followers and following, and tweet options to link to tweet, copy tweet, or copy tweet URL. There’s also an accompanying iPhone app [iTunes link], which syncs with the desktop version and greatly improves the app’s relevance.

Mashable rating: 3 stars
Hit feature: drag and drop categories to reorder (on left-hand panel)
Common concern: lack of support for groups or image posting

Nambu: This really sophisticated Mac app should be more than enough for any and all of your Twitter needs. You’ve got access to your followers and friends, custom groups, search (integrated with FriendFeed and One Riot), trends, tr.im and pic.im integration, multiple accounts, Ping.fm integration, filters, and three view options for a one or many column view of tweets.

Mashable rating: 4.5 stars
Hit feature: Twitter search with FriendFeed, OneRiot, and Yahoo results
Common concern: needs more variety for photo and URL shortening

Tweetie for Mac: Beautiful, sleek, and simple, Tweetie for Mac is everything you’d expect from the developers of the top mobile application for Twitter. You can get a beautiful view of conversations, toggle through and manage multiple accounts, save searches, and even post videos to yFrog. It’s the cleanest single column app with multiple account management that we’ve ever seen.

Mashable rating: 4 stars
Hit feature: killer conversation threads
Common concern: groups are strangely absent

TwitterPod: This app isn’t known for its sophistication or advanced Twitter functionality. TwitterPod is a basic single column Twitter app with an inline browser and the ability to filter for just tweets with links. Its heyday has long since passed, but original fan boys and girls may still be using this for their twittering.

Mashable rating: 2 stars
Hit feature: inline browser
Common concern: not reliable

EventBox: This just-for-Mac app is a favorite of many because it supports Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr integration, and also supports feed reading with Google Reader, and internet trend watching with Reddit and Digg. Keyboard shortcuts, hotkeys, instapaper integration, and photo uploads to Flickr and Facebook make EventBox pretty nifty. It’s also got a very slick interface with a navigation menu on the left-hand side.

Mashable rating: 4 stars
Hit feature: feed reading alongside tweet watching
Common concern: single Twitter account support only

Windows Apps

Digsby: The beloved IM, email notification, and social networking application also does Twitter, but it’s only available for PCs at the moment. On the social networking side, Digsby pulls in Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn so you can get a more complete view of what’s happening across your entire social presence.

Mashable rating: 2.5 stars
Hit feature: IM and email integration
Common concern: not robust enough for power users

DigiTweet: This open source desktop Twitter client for Windows is built on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and allows for a lot of customization in the layout and view of your Twitter stream with an interactive dockable pane. DigiTweet has also evolved to include multiple search tabs, color coding users you follow by categories (kind of love this), alerts for specific users, follow/unfollow, and link preview.

Mashable rating: 3.5 stars
Hit feature: toast alerts for specific tweeters
Common concern: tricky user interface

A Few More Options

Twhirl: This oldie but goodie, though no longer actively being updated (Seesmic Desktop took its place), is still working just fine and many a Twitter early adopter are happy to have a single column Twitter experience, with additional windows available for additional Twitter accounts, plus FriendFeed, Seesmic, and Identica integration for viewing and posting content to those sites. Since you can still save Twitter searches, Twhirl Twhirl is actually a really great desktop client if you’re not beholden to groups.

Mashable rating: 3.5 stars
Hit feature: FriendFeed support for viewing threads and adding comments
Common concern: window overload

Skimmer: It’s hard not to love this app. Not only is it beautiful to look at it, but it also tracks your favorite social sites. Skimmer’s certainly not an application for the social media beginner, but power users of Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, blogger, and Twitter, will appreciate the aggregation of content, filtering options, view types, and enhanced content viewing experience.

Mashable rating: 4.5 stars
Hit feature: gorgeous Flickr and YouTube video viewing
Common concern: sacrificing a few advanced twitter app features for beauty

Sideline: Sideline is just a search and trending topic app from Yahoo, but it does a darn good job at satisfying those specific needs. You can view current Twitter trends, select to see the three latest tweets or pop out as its own saved search, and create custom search groups as tabs.

Mashable rating: 4 stars
Hit feature: search groups that support multiple keywords
Common concern: can’t tweet from the app

Less to Tweet Home About

Tweetr: A lesser known simple app, Tweetr is beautiful adobe AIR based app that doesn’t support multiple accounts, and isn’t right for power users, but might be just perfect for lightweight Twitterers. You’re not going to get columns, groups, search, or filters, but you can share files and take photos with your web cam.

Mashable rating: 3 stars
Hit feature: file sharing and webcam photos
Common concern: URL shortening limited to hurl.ws

Twibble Desktop: Twibble is a bit of a riddle. It’s not a bad app when it comes to feature set, but it’s also not the most intuitive. You can manage multiple accounts, but all tweets are merged together in one stream. You can reply, DM, fav, RT, and copy tweets, but you’ll have to hover over the tweet to even know those behaviors are possible. You can also use keyboard shortcuts, filter your tweets for keywords, or conduct searches that open up in new windows, but Twibble just doesn’t seem to flow as easily as we’d like it to.

Mashable rating: 2 stars
Hit feature: drag and drop photo upload
Common concern: very tricky user interface

Twitterrific: Once the preferred app of the Mac Twitterati, Twitterrific has seen brighter days on your desktop (meanwhile the iPhone app is certainly an impressive option). As it stands, Twitterrific is hardly an improvement on the Twitter.com web experience.

Mashable rating: 2 stars
Hit feature: super lightweight
Common concern: hard to filter tweets for mentions and direct messages

Spaz: With a name like Spaz, you’d expect this AIR based client to be perfect for the Twitter spaz. Unfortunately, that’s not quite the case. So even though it’s not a terrible app for lightweight Twitterers, power users won’t get by on the limited feature set.

Mashable rating: 2.5 stars
Hit feature: in-line short URL decoding
Common concern: no photo uploading options

Snitter: Another one of those apps that was all the rage back in the day, but is now in dire need of an update. This one is definitely a pass for the time being.