Hint: it’s not the official Twitter clients
Since last weeks big upgrades to Twitter there is a lot of chatter about both the Web UI, as well as the apps for Android and iOS. I don’t use the Twitter Website much at all, but mobile Apps are another story more than half my tweets come from a mobile device.
My favorite mobile Twitter App has become Tweetcaster Pro (Android, iOS check the features lists not all features are available on all platforms) they have a free version with ads, and the Pro version which sells for $4.99 in the Android Market is ad free (I was lucky enough to grab the Pro version free as the Amazon Free App of the day a while ago). Besides all of the features you would expect it has two features I rely on heavily.
Merge lists in to timeline – I have a number of twitter lists I follow on a variety of topics, Tweetcaster lets you merge a list into you main timeline view, so for example when I am watching football on Sunday I merge my NFL List into my timeline, when the games are done I remove the list from my timeline. Nice way to see all the information in one place on Sunday, and have it separate the rest of the time.
Zip It – ever have someone in your timeline attend an event or tweet about something for a period of time that is of no interest to you? Keeping with our football example maybe you follow me, but have no interest in football. You can zip a person, hashtag, keyword to keep them out of your timeline with out un-following a person, and easily unzip them when that event is over.
Which twitter app is your favorite? If you were using the official Twitter apps do the recent changes have you looking for a new one?
From the get go, I have found the official Twitter apps to be disappointing and lacking features available in other apps. Hence, my major disappointment when I heard they had taken over Tweetdeck. That said, on my iOS devices, I use the official Twitter apps, although that doesn’t say much as the majority of my tweeting (which you know, is extensive) is done on Tweetdeck or on my BlackBerry via SocialScope.
I’ve been using Tweetings as my primary Twitter client for a long time. Apparently since April of 2010 when Twitter acquired Tweetie and re-branded it their official Twitter iOS app. I actually had just purchased Tweetings when I saw about Tweetie. But Tweetings have been constantly adding features and they far out-pace what Twitter has done with their app. Tweetings, for a while now, have had a mute feature for timelines like the zip feature you mentioned.
The updated twitter app makes it harder to switch between accounts. #fail. Tweetdeck hasn’t been running well for me on iOS so after trying it again, deinstalled it. Hootsuite could be nice, but not the features I like in the free version. I think I’ll give tweetcaster a try.