by Travis Scott | July 5th, 2009
Now that I have had an opportunity to use several Twitter apps on a multitude of platforms and for multiple reasons, I have decided to rank my favorite at every level. I hope this will be a helpful reference to those who are just starting to use Twitter on a regular basis.
Desktop = TweetDeck
If you are going to be tweeting from your computer, TweetDeck is the best tool to use. It is considered a desktop application because it is an Adobe Air app that is downloaded onto your computer.
It is very intuitive and easy to use from the beginning. Several months ago TweetDeck had a memory-hogging issue that has since been fixed and it no longer zaps your computer like it used to do.
TweetDeck also provides several URL shortening services such as bit.ly and Tinyurl so you don’t have to go to a different website just to shorten an unwieldy URL.
A major drawback TweetDeck had when being compared to several other popular desktop apps, such as Seesmic and Twhirl, was the fact that you could only login to one account at a time. That meant if you manage multiple accounts – business and personal, for example – you had to log out and log back in to each account. This was cumbersome and not very efficient. This is no longer applicable as TweetDeck added this feature in its most recent update last month.
The only downside to using TweetDeck, and this is actually applicable to all Twitter clients, is that Twitter restricts the number of times you can request information from them using an external client to 100 times per hour. As your Twitter network grows, you’ll find that this isn’t very much. I often find myself going to Twitter.com to send a tweet because my API limit is at 0.
Click here to download TweetDeck.
Efficiency = Ping.fm
Ping.fm isn’t necessarily just a Twitter app, but if you are tweeting something that you also want to include on several other sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace, then this is the app for you.
Once you create a login and register all of your social media accounts, you can quickly and easily send an update across all platforms using Ping.fm. Ping will even shorten the URL for you.
This saves a lot of time, especially if you have friends scattered about across different social media sites.
Monitoring = Splitweet
Similar to TweetDeck, Splitweet allows you to manage and monitor multiple Twitter accounts. Despite a lot of the same functionality of TweetDeck, I prefer to use Splitweet to monitor my clients’ brands as well as manage several of my clients accounts from this site. It is laid out very nicely and allows me to easily monitor one or all of the accounts as well as post to one or all of the accounts simultaneously. I don’t use that feature very often, but its nice to have should I need it.
In order to manage multiple brands in TweetDeck, I would have to create a search and add another column to my screen. Plus, I would have to be on my computer to use it, unless it happens to be installed on the computer I happen to be using. With Splitweet, I can login from any computer, anytime because it is a website.
Also, once I choose the brands I want to follow, I don’t have to do this again. I just simply click on the “Brands” link and there they are.
Again, not much different in terms of functionality from TweetDeck, just an easier interface to monitor accounts and brands. Very valuable if you want to keep an eye on your competitors as well.
URL Shortening = bit.ly
Because so many apps and sites include their own URL shortening or use one or more of the major players in this space, going to an external URL-shortening website isn’t as big of a deal as it was several months ago, however, if you are shortening a URL for Twitter.com or a site that doesn’t include a shortener such as Splitweet, then bit.ly is the recommended one to use.
The reason I recommend bit.ly is because of the rich link tracking they include. You essentially have your own analytics for each link you create. You can tell how many people clicked it, where those people were located and where they found your link (i.e., Twitter, FriendFeed, email, etc.).
Mobile = Tweetie (iPhone) and Twitterberry (Blackberry)
I know, I said this was going to be the top 5 Twitter apps. So, why did I include two in this category? I figured since its pretty even as to how people use Twitter from a mobile device- iPhone and Blackberry – that it would be a good idea to include what I felt was the best app for each.
Although I don’t have an iPhone, I do have an iPod Touch which allows me to use the same apps as an iPhone when I have access to WiFi. From my iPod I have used TweetDeck’s app, Tweetie and Twitterrific. Of the three, I definitely like Tweetie the best. Like Twitterrific, it is easy to find people who are nearby in geographic proximity that are tweeting, but Tweetie’s interface is just more user-friendly.
I just find it easier to use multiple accounts on Tweetie and you can get to your @ replies in less clicks than in Twitterrific.
Like other Twitter clients, such as TweetDeck, you are limited on the amount of requests that you can send to Twitter per hour. If you have exceeded your limit on TweetDeck and then try to use Tweetie, you are going to be out of luck as Twitter is tracking requests to from your Twitter account, not the app you are using.
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