***************If you look at this post and say "fuck, that's long" then go ahead and skip to the bottom. It's cool, but only this time.******************
I'm a big fan of a social networking service called Twitter. Huge fan, in fact. I think it is easily the most important and useful social networking service ever devised. It allows you to be connected to the world at a moments notice, provided that you are following the proper Twitter accounts. For example, follow @cnnbrk, and get breaking news stories the moment they are reported, wherever you are. Follow me (@bradperala) and get useless complaints and a debatable level of quality observational humor, on the go! Follow @Altpress and get all the alternative music news as it breaks. The list goes on and on and on.
Anyway, back in April, I upgraded my Twitter capabilities by investing in the iPhone 3GS. I use the iPhone for a lot of things, but the main thing I use it for, to be honest, is Tweeting. When I got the phone, I immediately downloaded three apps. Facebook, Pandora and Echofon, which is a Twitter app, before I left the parking lot of the AT&T parking lot. Well, I knew there were other iPhone Twitter apps available, but I wanted the first one I saw so I got that one. Also, I had done my research on the best and worst apps available, and they said this one was quite good, so I went for it.
Sometimes I like to look at what service people had used for their tweets, and I noticed that a lot came from "web" and a lot came from "txt," while others came from sources I was unfamiliar with. So I was curious as to why someone would send their tweets from services other than the ones I knew about/used. I began to download a few apps I had heard of and check them out as to see what I could possibly be missing out on. I ended up with six apps, including the original Echofon that I would test out and see which app was best. Then I would recommend the best one to my friends. I began the test on Wednesday, and I think I'm done now. I've seen all I need to see to formulate an opinion. The results have a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.
The six apps are: Echofon, Twitter for iPhone, Twitterific, Hootsuite, Seesmic, and Tweetdeck.
Let me start off by saying that I have used only Echofon for the past 4 months, so I naturally base all the opinions of the other apps off comparisons to that. I tried to be objective, but I just like Echofon so much, it's hard not to just find the things on the other apps that are different to it, and not like it. I wanted to see if the others were as easy to use, while possibly offering further service. What I found is that they pretty much don't. While some of the apps were neat, and clean and easy to use, they just didn't compare to Echofon. The way Echofon is set up is so convenient and easy to read. I would check my updates after a while, using a different app each time to see how it loads my many friends updates. Most of the time, I would check the updates on all six apps, which was time-consuming, but I had to do it that way. Some of the apps, the way their color schemes are set up, I would read them, then read the same updates on another app and wonder if I had even read it. I must have just skimmed over it. I don't know that's a personal thing I guess. Let's get down to it before this gets waaaay go long-winded.
The Good In Each:
Twitterific:
This app is probably the silver medal winner in this whole thing. What I like about it? It makes a sweet bird chirp every time you open it. There's this feature in there where you can see who has replied to any user. That's nice so you can get a feel of how many people reply to users, and get a better feeling of what their dealing with as far as that goes. Not entirely useful, but I like to know those things. You might not care, but I liked that. They color-code the background of Tweets involving you, so as you're scrolling though, you can clearly see the things pertaining to you. My brother uses it. When I had a problem figuring something out, and tweeted my problem, the actually replied to me on how to fix it. Big bonus points to them for that. That means they care about the users. They wanted to help me. If I had never gotten used to Echofon, Twitterific would be the winner.
Twitter for iPhone:
I like the sound effects when you reload the feed. It does this slide and pop sound thing, and it's neat. Loads quickly. Simple layout.
Tweetdeck:
I found it extremely easy to rifle through my tweets and list/replies with this app. I also have Tweetdeck for the desktop on my computer, so there's a nice little tie-in there. When you mark tweets as "seen" it make a cool clicking sound that makes me happy and want to hear it again.
Seesmic:
Simple and clean. Nothing special about it, but in a good way. If you wanted an app, any app, then I would not fight you if you wanted to get this one.
Hootsuite:
This app probably has the best Facebook section of all the ones that offer it. If you haven't checked you're twitter in a while, it'll just load the most recent tweets unless you ask it to load more, so therefore, it loads faster than most others. It also doesn't load until you ask it to do so.
Echofon:
Clearly indicates #hashtags, links and replies by putting them in a different color and font in the timeline, not just if you select that tweet. Shows how many new tweets and replies you have at the bottom with a little red circle and the number inside it. This aspect is only on Echofon, and I really wish all the other ones had it. When you want to tag someone in a tweet, after you type the @ and a letter, it shows a little bar on the bottom of the people you follow so you can quickly choose the one you want, instead of trying to remember how to spell someones ridiculous username. This is also true for #hashtags. just type the # and a letter and it'll remember all the things you hashtaged in the past, and suggest it. Most other app do not do any these things. You can open pictures and links directly from the timeline, reducing the amount of times you have to fumble with trying to click links on the tiny iPhone screen. It gives you a push notification when other Echofon users reply or mention you, which is really nice.
The Things I don't like:
Tweetdeck crashed more often than any other app. Twitterific has a HUGE add on the top of it, and that's annoying. Hootsuite you have to pull the screen down to refresh instead of it just doing it on it's own, like some other apps do. I see nothing to complain about with Seesmic, except that it doesn't have the colored text to indicate usernames, links, pics, hashtags, or mentions. Twitter for iPhone would be great if it told you how many tweets you have to read. If you exit on the replies page, when you open it again, it's still on the replies page and that confused me a number of times. Twitter for iPhone and Twitterific are the only two to offer the landscape view which is nice because some prefer to read stuff the long way sideways instead of the long way vertical. Seesmic doesn't tell you who has retweeted this random tweet, so you have to open it to find out. dumb. Hootsuite, Seesmic and Tweetdeck open pictures as the entire webpage in which it was uploaded to instead of the other three which just open the picture to the full screen's capacity, which the latter three is much better, IMHO.
So really, it just boils down to preference. If you want my advice on which iPhone twitter app to use, may I suggest Echofon, and Twitterific is a close second. Both are really easy to use and stuff. The Twitterific people replied to me, which goes a long way in my book, and it has cool sound effects.
Bottom line, if you skipped all that review jazz up there and just want the meat and potatos of the whole thing it goes like this. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest:
Echofon: 10
Twitterific: 9.2
Twitter for iPhone: 8.1
Seesmic: 7.6
Tweetdeck: 7
Hootsuite: 6.8
As you can see, you can't really go wrong here. Whichever app you choose, they're all alright, I just found Echofon to offer the most advantages versus disadvantages. With such a simple service as Twitter, you shouldn't really have too much going on with the app. Simplicity is key, yet make the experience enjoyable for the user, and Echofon and Twitterific accomplish that. The end.
Twitteriffic has options to change the sound effect too -- when I used it I had this low-pitch Robin sound, it was badass.
ReplyDeleteEchofon is what I use now so I totally agree with you here.