Feeling Overwhelmed? What’s The Best Twitter Desktop Application?

Dave, I bet this varies based on how people use twitter. I use the browser, mainly so tweetdeck doesn't take over my life and because most of what I do online is in tabs anyway.

If it becomes more important to me to filter and search, I'll be jumping on tweetdeck, but it serves me in the long run at this point if I have a filter between me and the twitter hill.

I can see how tweetdeck would be really useful for keeping track of various groups, say your family, then your preds fans, bidnes partners, then your tech mixer guys, etc.

I can also see if twitter is more a conversational lifestyle tool for you, then the more chat-like tools would be up your alley.

Cheers.

Thanks Nate! Those are some great thoughts. I have multiple uses, so
I'm still a little undecided.

I'm curious to see the outcome of the vote.

Cheers.

I find TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop too overwhelming. I like the fact that I can see everything in one continuous stream in Twhirl, but also have the options to look speciifically at other aspects, such as replies, directs, my timeline.

Thanks Tracy. Great points, I've used Twhirl for a long time now (even
though I can't spell it ;-)

Hee... I was corrected once a long time ago from @twhirl...And I've never forgotten it since.

:-) I can't edit the vote, so I'll have to live with my typo. It
wasn't my first one, it won't be my last onn.

Kidding!

Well, you could look at it this way -- You get a "Thrill" with "Twhirl"

Works.... kinda. ;)

Nice. Did you come up with dessert having two ss, because you always
want a second helping too?

:-)

Well, yeah... D'uh! ;)

Nambu is the best so far -- it has support for groups, it shows unread count for each group (unlike Seesmic Desktop), and adding a person to a group is faster (fewer clicks, better search) w/ Nambu than with Seesmic Desktop.

However, Nambu crashes ALL the time. On Twitter yesterday I said using Nambu was liking having a boatload of pissed Somalian pirates between you and a tray of bacon truffles. I see exactly what I want, but I can't use it for more than an hour without freezing.

I'm still waiting for the ability to mute a user (still follow, but not get tweets -- mainly to mute *myself*); mute specific keywords; toggle how long I want to save messages (i.e. have a "favorites" group that pulled all their messages for me to read, vs. only seeing current messages); and put a note for why I'm following someone (CoTweet has this, but I have to click the name, then Note, to see the note. I want the note every time I see a tweet.)

I've started building my own app to take care of these things, but I'm a beginner programmer so it's slow going ;)

If you have an account that doesn't need groups, Tweetie is awesome. Clean interface, easy keyboard shortcuts, no memory leaks AFAIK. I use that + Sideline (for awesome/fast Twitter searches), plus Nambu for my two Twitter accounts that I need groups.

Wow great tips!
I was just listening to a Podcast (Slate). They were discussing if the
modern day pirates even realize they are bring compared to old school
pirates. Do they even call themselves pirates? Do they have any catch
phrases like Arghhh Matey!

I haven't messed with Nambu too much yet, but I love the groups
option, that's huge. Plus multiple users I'd important for me now
since I'm tweeting from @davedelaney, @griffintech and @daveislearning.

Too bad about the stability issues. :-(

I'm with you, Dave (not about pirate musings) on the importance of Multiple account management; I want to see it all on one page. On your recommendation I checked out Seesmic yesterday. It was awesome until it stopped working for a few hours... I shot out a random tweet about it and Seesmic responded (key word monitoring can be awesome) with a request for specifics. I gave them more info, and never heard back from them! A couple hours later Seesmic started working again. Coincidence? I'm sure it is.

In a nutshell, managing multiple accounts simultaneously is the #1 feature I'm looking for; everything else is gravy!

Hey Dave,

In my opinion the only options are TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop. The ability to break things into groups is very easy and for me, the way they filter @ replies is very important so I don't miss anyone talking to me or referencing me.

TweetDeck used to crash all the time on a Mac. It was so power hungry you'd think it was trying to take over a 3rd world country or something. But once Seesmic came out, TweetDeck upgraded and now it hasn't crashed or froze one time.

I'm still testing Seesmic and I really like it, but I'm so used to TweetDeck it's hard to commit.

But I do know that Seesmic has some BIG plans and I think if you did this same poll a year from now things would be different.

It's not on your list, but I'm also testing TweetVisor which has a lot of potential. It's a nice TweetDeck looking browser. Good option for those who like using the web.

Overall, I like that there's options out there. But I don't understand why anyone would use Twitter.com as their app! If you're following a decent number of people and get a decent number actually talking to you, then the web is a hassle. With TweetDeck, Seesmic, TweetVisor, etc I can just 'glance' and see if someone has sent me a message or 'glance' at my groups to see if something really great is going on.

If I use the web for my app then I lose more time searching, sifting, and finding stuff.

Great feedback. Thanks!
Have you tried the browser with the Greasemonkey scripts?

I have not. What does it do?

Check out my post: make Twitter Kick Ass.

Poor spelling and extreme brevity brought to you by iPhone.

www.davemadethat.com