Twitter twittering, pt. 2

One thing I have noticed about using the Twitter apps on the iPhone is that they are somewhat interchangeable in function. Rather obvious observation, but what distinguishes one app from another? There are a few basic things I like to do when I'm using Twitter each time I open an app: check updates, direct messages, and respond to any follow requests. All four of the apps I have do these things in a very similar way. The differences are small, but may make the difference in choosing one app over another. For example, TwitBird Pro (formerly iTwitter) shows the most recent update so that you have to scroll down to find the last unread tweet. I have tried to find a way in the settings to switch this option, but I haven't yet. If I don't check for awhile, when I update I have to scroll down to find the last unread tweet. TwitBird Pro does allow for easy marking of read tweets, although the only option is to mark all read. I have been using TweetDeck more and more lately because of the groups option, whihc allows you to create groups for easier following of your Twitter friends. I also like the interface with TweetDeck more than the other three apps I have. The experiment will continue as I try to determine why I like one app more than another.

Twitter twitterings

Today, Twitter went down and revived itself before I even knew about it. I saw a news story online and then saw a flood of stories about how Armageddon had almost arrived. I was expecting the Four Horsemen of the Internet to have descended upon the fragile intertwinings of the new darling of social media. People were literally all atwitter about the lack of Twitter. I like Twitter, I use it, although in a more passive/lurker mode than as an active and frequent twitter tweeter. I follow friends and podcasts, folks who have similar interests that I may know from forums I read (and lurk in). I have posted 220 tweets (as of today) and I joined Twitter over a year ago. I have also sent about 60 direct messages (most to the same person – it seems quicker than email or texting for some reason). I’m not a super-user by any stretch of the imagination, but had I known that Twitter had big issues today, I probably would have checked every few minutes to see if it was back up and working. I like seeing what my tweeps are doing, what interesting pictures they're sharing, or what links they have posted. I do feel connected to these folks and I would not have enjoyed being out of touch.

How I would have checked Twitter's status brings me to this point: I can’t have Twitter open on my work laptop (nor should I, really), but I can check the various apps on my iPhone that allow users to tweet, post picture via Twitpic (or yfrog, flic.kr, etc.), send direct messages, follow, unfollow, well, you get the idea. The apps allow a person to follow Twitter, even when they can’t get to a computer. There are many apps around that do this. I have 4 right now, Twitterific, TweetDeck, TwitterFon, and iTwitter. What I’d like to try to do over the next few posts (which I hope are more frequent than my more recent posts), is review, in an unscientific way, these apps, how they work for me, which one I use most and why.