Official Twitter Apps For BlackBerry, iPhone Updated

Twitter recently rolled out some major updates to its official applications for the BlackBerry and iPhone platforms. The BlackBerry Twitter app received a large number of upgrades, including new features requested by users. The new iPhone Twitter app is a rebadged version of Tweetie 2.0.Official BlackBerry Twitter App

Research In Motion and Twitter created an official Twitter application for BlackBerries and launched it several months ago. The software has been in beta, and early adopters have been providing RIM and Twitter with feedback about how the software works. Believe it or not, Twitter actually listened to the user feedback and is offering a new version of the beta with a huge number of new features.

Twitter for BlackBerry can now do the following:

--Quote Tweets - Ability to edit ReTweets

--Auto Complete for @ usernames - When you type an "@" followed by characters, the auto complete feature pops up a list of users as you type

--View Geotagged Tweets - View locations of geotagged tweets on BlackBerry Maps

--Personal Info Guard - Warning appears when sharing personal information (e.g. email address, PIN, phone number)

--Hotkeys for Navigation - New hotkey functionality has been added for lists, find people, etc. R reply, L reply all, Space page down, F retweet, C compose, D refresh, Alt+0 (home), alt+1(mentions), alt+2 (lists), alt+3(profile), alt+4(inbox), alt+5(find people), alt+6(search), alt+7(popular topics).

--Go to User - Ability to access any users profile from anywhere in the application using auto-complete functionality for followers

--Additional photo viewing support

In order to use the new Twitter for BlackBerry application, users have to have a BlackBerry with 64MB of memory running OS 4.5 or later. Users who already downloaded the first beta will be notified when the new beta is available. New users are free to sign up to get the download. More info available here.

Twitter for iPhone

Twitter recently purchased a company called AteBits. AteBits was responsible for the popular Tweetie application for the iPhone. There are tons of iPhone Twitter apps. I've used perhaps a dozen of them, and Tweetie was always my favorite. Twitter pulled the Tweetie app from the Apps Store several days ago, indicating that a new version was on the way. The new version of Tweetie was made available yesterday, and is now called Twitter for iPhone.

New features are slim in this modest update. Twitter for iPhone now lets iPhone users conduct searches faster, and the app displays Top Tweets, as well as matching Twitter users in the search results. Twitter for iPhone also lets users access the public Twitter stream without actually signing into their accounts. If you don't have an account, the Twitter for iPhone app will let you create one directly from the application.

Last, Tweetie used to cost $2.99. Twitter for iPhone is free.