Desktop Twitter Programs Revealed
Desktop Twitter clients offer some advantages over browser-based options for the more than 175 million registered Twitter users navigating the tens of millions of daily Tweets. Desktop clients free user from the limited range of controls and UT metaphors found in the browser, and there's less chance of being bitten by a web-based exploit. Moreover, third-party browser-based clients, such as HootSuite and Slipstre.am, hint at different ways of interacting with Twitter. It's no wonder that third-p
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TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application, meaning it runs on almost every platform you might find yourself tweeting from: Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as Android, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Besides being a Twitter client, TweetDeck posts updates to many other widely used social networks: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Buzz and Foursquare. You can use TweetDeck as is or sign up for an account with TweetDeck's services that lets you add your own Twitter account(s) to the TweetDeck Directory (a faster way to have your tweets noticed) or sync your settings between different installations of TweetDeck.
Twitter, which has made a major push to get on mobile phones, says the number of people accessing the site through their handhelds has jumped 62% since mid-April. Twitter also reported Thursday that 16% of all new Twitter users now start on their mobile phone, much higher than the 5% in mid-April, when the company announced plans to have a Twitter-branded client on all the major smartphone platforms. Those platforms include Apple's iOS, found in the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch; the BlackBerry OS from Research in Motion and Google's Android operating system, which powers phones from Samsung, HTC, Motorola and others. Nevertheless, the dominant way people head to Twitter remains their computers. In the last 30 days, 78% of unique users posted updates to the microblogging site through Twitter.com, while 14% use the site's mobile website, m.twitter.com; 8% text messaging, 8% Twitter for iPhone and 7% Twitter for BlackBerry. The numbers add up to more than 100%, because people use multiple apps in accessing the site.
SEE ALSO: Reviewed: Top 5 Twitter Clients
Seesmic Desktop is a desktop client app that resembles TweetDeck's first cousin because the feature set is largely the same, but with significant differences in layout and functionality. Seesmic also is written in Microsoft Silverlight, as opposed to TweetDeck's Adobe Air, which makes Seesmic available across multiple platforms. (A web-based version also exists with much of the functionality of the desktop client.) Seesmic also differs from TweetDeck in that the former has a plug-in architecture, and much of the program's functionality is not baked directly into it but, rather, supplied by a gamut of add-ons.
SEE ALSO: Reviewed: Top 5 Twitter Clients
Twhirl is a desktop client built for Twitter and a few other services -- identi.ca, laconi.ca, Friendfeed and Seesmic Video. Because Twhirl emphasizes compactness, it doesn't use the multi-column format of programs like HootSuite or TweetDeck. However, in the long run, it's almost as easy to manage. Twhirl has been acquired by the same folks who created Seesmic, but development continues on Twhirl as a separate product. Twhirl's design works best for people with a low volume of messages in their Twitter streams or casual users who want the flexibility of a desktop client without the bulk.
SEE ALSO: Reviewed: Top 5 Twitter Clients
The web service HootSuite gives you a single online dashboard through which you can manage not just Twitter but also a spate of other common social networks. The basic free version is ad-supported, with a bunch of minor limitations on the services (e.g., you can only add up to five social networks). But, for most people looking to add a modicum of control over multiple accounts, the basic version will do. To set up HootSuite with Twitter, you must give it permission to connect to your account as a native Twitter application, something TweetDeck does as well. The layout is also vaguely similar to TweetDeck: a multi-column screen, with each feed in its own column. A tab selector near the top lets you switch between your own accounts or a page of featured tweets. However, there's no auto-shortening of URLs when typing; you must paste URLs into a subpanel and click to shrink them.
SEE ALSO: Reviewed: Top 5 Twitter Clients
Still in beta as of this writing, Slipstre.am is designed to provide additional filtering to Twitter streams apart from lists or hashtags. It's not quite a full-blown client, but rather a kind of meta front end for Twitter that lets you extract that much more signal from the noise. The interface strongly resembles the classic Twitter layout, though it's missing a few recent common features, such as URL shortening. What's important about Slipstre.am is not the interface itself but its filtering system, which can work by criteria other than just text strings.
SEE ALSO: Reviewed: Top 5 Twitter Clients
Still in beta as of this writing, Slipstre.am is designed to provide additional filtering to Twitter streams apart from lists or hashtags. It's not quite a full-blown client, but rather a kind of meta front end for Twitter that lets you extract that much more signal from the noise. The interface strongly resembles the classic Twitter layout, though it's missing a few recent common features, such as URL shortening. What's important about Slipstre.am is not the interface itself but its filtering system, which can work by criteria other than just text strings.
SEE ALSO: Reviewed: Top 5 Twitter Clients
TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application, meaning it runs on almost every platform you might find yourself tweeting from: Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as Android, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Besides being a Twitter client, TweetDeck posts updates to many other widely used social networks: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Buzz and Foursquare. You can use TweetDeck as is or sign up for an account with TweetDeck's services that lets you add your own Twitter account(s) to the TweetDeck Directory (a faster way to have your tweets noticed) or sync your settings between different installations of TweetDeck.
Twitter, which has made a major push to get on mobile phones, says the number of people accessing the site through their handhelds has jumped 62% since mid-April. Twitter also reported Thursday that 16% of all new Twitter users now start on their mobile phone, much higher than the 5% in mid-April, when the company announced plans to have a Twitter-branded client on all the major smartphone platforms. Those platforms include Apple's iOS, found in the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch; the BlackBerry OS from Research in Motion and Google's Android operating system, which powers phones from Samsung, HTC, Motorola and others. Nevertheless, the dominant way people head to Twitter remains their computers. In the last 30 days, 78% of unique users posted updates to the microblogging site through Twitter.com, while 14% use the site's mobile website, m.twitter.com; 8% text messaging, 8% Twitter for iPhone and 7% Twitter for BlackBerry. The numbers add up to more than 100%, because people use multiple apps in accessing the site.
SEE ALSO: Reviewed: Top 5 Twitter Clients
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