It would be an understatement to say that people were looking forward to the desktop release of the popular Twitter client Tweetie, which prior to yesterday was only available for consumption on the iPhone. In this weird world we live in, where Twitter teeters on the edge of complete mainstream absorption, it’s a great idea to step back and see what options are available to you. So, without further ado, let’s get to it.
Preface
As you all probably know by now, I’m an avid Twitter user. That said, I also realize that Twitter, by it’s very nature, can be distracting. I chalk this up to that fact that it’s so easy to update and ingest multiple (and oft-unrelated) small pieces of information so rapidly that you just get lost in it all. Because of this, when I look for a Twitter client (be it on the Mac or the iPhone) I’m looking for something streamlined that organizes the chaos rather than heightening it. There’s also this little voice in the back of my head that cries foul whenever I see a non-native interface on my screen. I’m looking at you, Adobe AIR.
So all I look for in a Twitter client is a clean, streamlined UI written in the native OS language (whether it’s Mac or Windows). To some that might be unfair because I’d hazard a guess and say that a majority of people I follow on Twitter use either TweetDeck or DestroyTwitter, both of which use non-native interface widgets. Regardless, this is my take on the subject and if you want to chime in, that’s what the comments are for.
On Tweetie
So we get to Tweetie, which isn’t a port of the iPhone app by any means, but brings what you could call an “iPhone-esque” experience to the desktop. In a world of Twitter clients that want to inundate you with as much information as possible and take up so much screen real estate, Tweetie plays it pretty close to the chest and breaks things up in the same fashion you’d find in many iPhone Twitter clients.
Very slick and takes up only a fraction of the screen real estate of some of the other Twitter clients.
Along the top you’ll also notice breadcrumb navigation that tells you exactly where you are if you’ve explored inside of a particularly lengthy series of @replies, DMs, searches, etc. It’s a great way to show how you arrived where you are, but also functional in the sense that it lets you backtrack by clicking earlier in the breadcrumb trail.
The main timeline is concise and clutter-free. To the right of each of your follower’s tweets is an arrow that allows you to shoot back a quick @reply and clicking on a @username takes you to that person’s stream. When you receive new tweets, the menu bar glows blue and within the app itself blue markers appear to indicate what’s been received (stream updates, @replies, DMs, etc). It actually makes zipping through all of the conversations easy, organized, and most importantly: intuitive.
Speaking to the ‘Verse
The weird thing about Tweetie, and I know I’m not alone on this one, is the position of the New Tweet button which is tucked away, very small, in the bottom left hand corner of the program. Being a keyboard jockey, it really isn’t too much for me to just hit Command + N, but for some people it could take a few moments to realize it’s a clickable button.
Once you find the New Tweet button, you write your tweets in a window separate from the main program, which at first I thought was kind of a silly idea; especially after having used the Mac version of Twitterriffic for so long. Turns out, it’s grown on me and has proven to be a distraction-free way to write tweets that works especially well when you want to add links or images to the mix using drag and drop.
Additional tools built in to the compose window allow you to shorten URLs and add images.
The preferences of the program allow you to select from both a wide variety of URL shortening services as well as image hosting solutions. For URL shortening I vacillate between bit.ly and tr.im, and both are fully supported which makes me smile. As for the image hosting, all of the usual suspects are included: YFrog, TwitPic, Twitgoo, or Posterous. The amount of tools packed into such a small window is actually quite impressive.
Summing It Up
As with any software, your mileage may vary from mine. If there’s one thing that’s for sure though, it’s that Tweetie accomplishes the goal of taking a massive amount of data and funneling it in such a way that makes general consumption easy, fun, and usable for both beginners and pros alike.
There are some things that I would change about it: ability to remove the dock icon, add a refresh button (maybe opposite the new tweet button), add the ability to delete tweets, and a few others, but overall for a 1.0 release it’s already shaping up to be one hell of a program.
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