TweetDeck for iPhone Review
TweetDeck, the Most Popular Desktop Twitter Client, according to twitstat, got an iPhone release this week at the accessible price of free. But can it unseat the well-loved Tweetie?
TweetDeck, the Popular Desktop Twitter Client, Now Available for iPhone
TweetDeck’s primary draw for the twitter addict is organization. The iPhone app carries on this tradition by allowing users to organize tweets into user defined columns that you can switch through with the swipe. If you’re the type that follows your real-life friends, internet gaming buddies, coworkers, websites, news feeds and the odd celebrity or artist, this organization is essential for not letting any tweets get left behind.
TweetDeck is especially useful for not allowing your close friends to get lost in the din
Columns are easy to create, and if your a desktop TweetDeck user, you can easily download your columns from the TweetDeck Servers, letting you get an on-the-go version of your Twitter Organization in minutes.
For the unacquainted, there are a few basic types of columns you can create.
- User Group, a subset of your total follow list
- Twitter Search, where you can search for a term amonst all twitter users
- All Friends, your entire follow list
- Mentions, your @replies
- Direct Messages
- Favorites
Organization is easy in TweetDeck
All Friends, Mentions and Direct Messages come enabled by default, which is pretty standard for this kind of an app.
You can also have multiple twitter accounts on TweetDeck, allowing you to quickly view tweets from multiple accounts, each organized as meticulously as you see fit.
One of other major differences is the “Updates” button, which lets you know which columns have new things for you to look at. As it makes background calls to the twitter server, it will also inform you of new tweets with pop-up notifications. All this can get a little annoying, but it can be useful if your trying to manage a lot of tweets.
Notificaitons keep you updated, but can get annoying quickly
Rounding out the features list is an API Call count at the top of the page, letting you know how many additional calls to twitter you can make in a given hour.
It isn’t without it’s downsides, however. It doesn’t have many of the features that make Tweetie so great, like built in full-screen viewing of twitpic and yfrog images or quick reply/favorite feature using the swipe. It also crashed several times just today, so there seem to be a few stability issues as well.
For those spoiled by Tweetie, some things just seem lame
You should use TweetDeck: If you are following a large number of people, or merely a modest amount of people that you’d like organized better, you want to quickly view more than one twitter account, or if anything but “Free” is too much for a Twitter Client.
You shouldn’t use TweetDeck: If you view a lot of images via twitter, only follow a couple friends, or are too used to the simplicity and awesome of Tweetie to consider anything less.
This would be my new favorite twitter app if it included the ability to make a trends column.