Should You Use the New Twitter.com or a Twitter App?

Web apps! They're more and more like real apps. Take the new Twitter.com. It's pretty damned amazing. Is it so good you can ditch desktop Twitter apps forever?

The new Twitter feels a lot like an application, slapped on top of Twitter.com. That's partly because it's built like an application. It uses the same Twitter API that any third-party app does. The two-pane split view recalls the iPad Twitter app, and the design intent is largely the same: to keep you on Twitter.com while you're consuming the content the people you follow are tweeting. The right pane is like an activity panel. It expands out to show conversations between users, photos, videos, profile info, location and more. And the whole thing flows insanely smoothly and dynamically, like an app. There's infinite scrolling, so tweets keep coming as you scroll down. When you click the arrow to expand a tweet into the right panel, it shoots out like a card. There's even keyboard shortcuts and autocomplete like a real app (or Gmail, another exemplary web app).

My default desktop app is Tweetie. It's simple, it's native, and it's mostly everything I need in a Twitter app. I can switch accounts, run active searches, view conversations and check out photos within the app. The new Twitter does nearly all of that just as well as Tweetie—except account switching—and it has features the deprecated Tweetie doesn't, like native-style retweets and geolocation. The new Twitter hasn't replaced Tweetie, because Tweetie's always right there on my desktop, but for the first time, it feels like a legit alternative. I don't feel limited when I go to Twitter.com anymore.

The people who will feel limited? Power users who run apps like TweetDeck that take up an entire second monitor, with a bunch of accounts and searches running across ten columns of information constantly flowing down their screen like code from the Matrix. Or crazy rich people who use an iPad as a second monitor just for Twitter. New Twitter just doesn't provide that kind of firepower, because it's not meant to.

But for most normal people, you can probably stop searching for the perfect Twitter app, if you've been looking for something relatively simple but powerful. It's at Twitter.com.

5 Fabulous Twitter Follower Visualization Tools

1. TwitterSheep

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This is a really nice and simple, but super fun way to look at your Twitter followers. TwitterSheep generates a keyword cloud based on the text in your followers’ bio. To generate a cloud of your own (or indeed a cloud for anyone else’s Twitter username) just head on over to the site, enter the name and within minutes you can have your own keyword cloud that you can choose to tweet out to your “flock.”

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2. 5k Twitter Browser

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Neuro Productions’ Flash-based Twitter browser is a spacey way to “see” connections on Twitter, something that is nearly impossible on the site itself. Start with any Twitter user’s name and the app will load up a circle of contacts, their thumbnail pic and latest tweet. Click on a contact in that circle and it will do the same thing, endlessly creating visual connections that people have made across the social networking site as long as you keep clicking.

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3. ISParade

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Quite possibly the most fun you can have with Twitter, this Japanese application will create an animated parade of your Twitter contacts complete with, in our opinion, the “bounciest” music we’ve ever heard. If you haven’t seen this yet, then we really don’t want to spoil the fun of discovering it by saying too much more. Head on over and try it out now!

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4. TweepsKey

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This clever app uses good ol’ arithmetic to generate an intelligent graph of your Twitter followers, displaying “tweeps” as differently colored and sized dots across an X, Y and Z axis. Where the tweep is placed depends on the tweets a follower has tweeted and how many followers they have, while the size and color of the tweep relates to data on their followers. It may sound a little complicated, but it’s worth a go to see how your personal Twitterverse appears.

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5. Crowded Ink “Friends” Mug

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Crowded Ink’s online mug-making tool takes all your Twitter follower’s thumbnail images and plasters them to the surface of a $15 Zazzle mug, offering you a fun way to display your very own little part of the Twitterverse. As well as generating a design for your username, you can easily do the same for others, so there’s someserious gift potential here for a Twitter-loving buddy.

Best Twitter Apps for iPhone

During the iPhone's nascent stages, users had limited choices when it came to Twitter applications. But now, there are myriad services that allow you to blast 140-character tweets, and keep up with your buddies, too. So now, the problem is weeding out the pretenders from the contenders – not that we're complaining. 

So to help you decide which app is best for you, we're offering a brief overview, with ratings (on a 1-to-5-birdie scale, of course), of eight Twitter apps for iPhone. BlackBerry users, don't fret; we've got you covered, too.

Twitter

Price: Free
Ease: 5
Aesthetics: 3
Speed: 4
Options: 5
Multimedia: 4

Overall tweetability:

It took long enough for it to appear, but when it did, the official Twitter app (which is really just a revamped version of Tweetie) instantly became a fan favorite. It's not too fancy looking, but gets points for its ease of use. When composing a message, a simple button tap hides the keyboard, and lets you access tools like username and hashtag search, URL shrinking, your iPhone's camera, your photo library and geotag services. Plus, you can search trending topics and nearby tweets, just like in real life. It's simple and to the point -- just like our favorite tweets.

Echofon

Price: Free
Ease: 4
Aesthetics: 2
Speed: 4
Options: 3
Multimedia: 3

Overall tweetability

Echofon was the top dog for a while, and it's still a good choice for Twitter users who want a free and simple app. The navigation bar runs across the bottom of the feed, and, while its options may be limited as compared to other apps (with its lack of URL-shortener, for example), there's something to be said for such a simple and clean interface. It's not as thorough as Twitter's app, but great for beginners.

Tweetdeck

Price: Free
Ease: 5
Aesthetics: 5
Speed: 4
Options: 5
Multimedia: 5

Overall tweetability

There's one reason why we love Tweetdeck so much: its columnar layout, similar to Safari's on the iPhone. To start, there are columns for users you follow, @ mentions and direct messages. But Tweetdeck also lets you add columns, which is perfect for those with more than one Twitter account or for adding customized searches and your Twitter lists. If you only download one app on this list, make it Tweetdeck. 

Twitterific

Price: Free
Ease: 3
Aesthetics: 3
Speed: 2
Options: 3
Multimedia: 4

Overall tweetability

Twitterific is another clean app, with the usual tabs – tweets, mentions, messages and favorites – but also a list of trending topics underneath a search bar. Our main complaint is that the Twitter stream lags and can be slow to update. Plus, it's annoying to toggle between streams. We would much prefer a navigation bar to this app's clunky menu.

Seesmic

Price: Free
Ease: 4
Aesthetics: 3
Speed: 4
Options: 5
Multimedia: 3

Overall tweetability

Seesmic is an all-in-one social-media client for the iPhone. While that's fine, we prefer to keep our Twitters and our Facebooks from clashing in a social media brawl. However, Seesmic is well-designed, easy to navigate, supports multiple Twitter accounts and lets you hook into MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Wordpress and countless other services. If we have any complaint, it's that, as a Twitter client, Seesmic just doesn't stand out enough, which can be a problem in the crowded app market.

HootSuite

Price: $2.99, or free for the Lite version
Ease: 4
Aesthetics: 4
Speed: 3
Options: 5
Multimedia: 4

Overall tweetability

For the person who's too busy to tweet in real time, HootSuite allows users to schedule tweets in advance. While that feature sets this app apart, we also like how easy it is to toggle between streams -- just by swiping a finger across the screen. HootSuite also offers Facebook integration, and, for pro users, lets you track the performance of your shared links. Our biggest gripe with HootSuite is the initial setup, which is too time-consuming, cluttered and not very user friendly.

Twitbird

Price: Free
Ease: 3
Aesthetics: 4
Speed: 2
Options: 3
Multimedia: 3

Overall tweetability

Twitbird is just too darn cute to leave off this list. (Just say its name out loud if you don't believe us.) It's aesthetically pleasing, and users can even customize the background of the main feed. Be warned, though: this app is pretty slow. Still, for a free app, Twitbird is stocked with options, including Facebook integration and list support. It's jut too bad they're rendered useless by the time lag. 

Brizzly

Price: Free
Ease: 2
Aesthetics: 3
Speed: 2
Options: 3
Multimedia: 5

Overall tweetability

It's about as much fun to set up Brizzly as it is to get a tooth pulled. Why on earth should we have to confirm our account via e-mail? There's not a lot to write home about once you've completed that arduous process, either. Sure, Brizzly is free, and we like how photos and videos show up in the main feed. (Note to other apps: copy that.) Other than that, you're probably better off looking elsewhere.