PORTLAND, OR, United States – If there’s one thing that defines my phone activity, right after calling, messaging and Facebooking, it’s tweeting. I love Twitter because the service contains all my little sub-communities around my hometown, my mobile geek friends and even my community management colleagues.
Looking around the Windows Marketplace, the Twitter client landscape is blooming. There are so many clients that offer so many different features, it’s hard to weed out the best of the best. Well, lucky for you, I’ve tried a load and I’m here to break down the Twitter Windows Phone landscape for you.
Rowi: My pal Ricky Cadden was the first to suggest Rowi to me. This full-featured Twitter app has one advantage that I really like – a Live Tile that updates with mentions and direct messages when they come in to my Twitter inbox.
Rowi supports only one Twitter account at a time. However, the app made a fan out of me because of its use of text and images in displaying text. There are three basic homescreens in Rowi, including timeline, mentions and messages. You can add other homescreens if you want, including others’ timelines and searches.
When you compose a message, you have the option to reveal your geolocation data. My only complaint about Rowi is that scrolling is slow when browsing a list of Tweets. Also, the app could benefit from pre-fetching before I switch timeline views.
I’ve been told by the developer that a new version is coming that will address these issues. I look forward to seeing it.
Birdsong. Birdsong is a popular client amongst Windows Phone users. This powerful app lets you sign in to multiple Twitter accounts and even configure your homescreen with up to five timelines including search or even list results.
Birdsong also supports inline photo viewing for services such as TwitPic, yfrog, Flickr, Plixi and moby.
Direct Messages are shown in a very attractive threaded view along with Twitter conversations housed in @ reply messages. Bing Maps integration is also built in along with an inline browser, meaning you don’t have to exit the application to view links.
Overall, I found Birdsong to be a very capable Twitter client that scrolled quickly and kept up with my fast navigation between screens. One gripe is that text was awfully big, meaning I had to do a lot of scrolling to see all my messages.
Official Twitter Application: The Twitter app is on a par with the official Twitter applications on other platforms. The official app goes against the minimalistic user experience of Rowi and Birdsong, opting for a bright blue and white look to the application.
There are four main home screens including timeline, mentions, messages and lists. Adding lists as a homescreen by default is a nice touch as some Twitter power-users depend on lists to keep their Twitter herd organized.
I found the Twitter app to be responsive and quick at all times. The official app doensn’t support Live Tiles or multiple Twitter accounts, but it covers the basics very well and with speed and responsiveness.
Seesmic: If you’re looking for something different when it comes to Twitter clients on your Nokia Lumia, Seesmic should be on your list.
Seesmic is unique because not only does the app support Twitter, it can also be useful to SalesForce Chatter and Facebook users as well.
Looking at the Twitter integration, Seesmic has the obvious timeline, replies, messages and list views. However, on the launch page, Seesmic has a concept of Spaces, which can be defined as customized homescreens for your social dashboard. Very cool.
Live Tiles are supported with Seesmic and can be customized so you can see replies and direct messages as unique tiles. This is very handy for power Twitter users. Seesmic is one of the few apps that supports fast app switching, meaning you can go in between apps and resume Seesmic quickly.
30 top apps for Lumia smartphones.
Which apps are you finding useful for tweeting?
image credit: dobrych
