Best Twitter Desktop Clients

Twitter is an amazing example of a Web 2.0 application that continues to grow at an astronomical rate. Twitter has become hugely popular among people and every one is busy tweeting at all places. With this has risen the need for twitter clients and they are becoming popular day by day. Although still more than half the people prefer to tweet using Twitter’s web interface but the trend is gradually changing. Here we look at some of the best twitter clients across various platforms.

1. Twhirl

Twhirl is the most used twitter client on Windows. It offers a simple and beautiful looking interface that works on Adobe AIR platform. Not only twitter, it also integrated into Seesmic, Identi.ca and FriendFeed into the desktop client as these services are quite similar in terms of the interface. Twhirl is not directly supported on Windows and requires you to first install Adobe’s AIR platform in order to be able to use this desktop client.

Twhirl can basically do every stuff that you desire from a twitter client. Basic tasks such as sending tweets, tracking tweets, replying to tweets, marking tweets as favorites are accomplished easily through its neat interface. Twhirl makes good use of space and fills in lots of features without cluttering. For example, the display image of a person has options to reply to tweet, send direct message to person, re-tweet and favorite tweets when you hover the mouse to it.

Shortening URLs is very easy, thanks to the inbuilt functionality allowing you to shorten URLs on the fly. It offers three websites which it can use to shorten the URL. It offers both visual and audio notifications to notify you of the tweets that you receive. Twitpic is compatible with Twhirl which is an added advantage. Filtering is probably the best feature of twhirl which allows you to filter out tweets containing a particular term or a phrase.

2. Twitterific

Twitterific is a twitter client built for the OS X platform. It was first available for the Mac but now is also available for the iPhone. Twitter has a great looking interface and also has a lot of keyboard shortcuts to accomplish various tasks. Twitterific has multiple twitter account support too. A right clock on a tweet brings up a pile of options to choose from which include replying, favorite the tweet, send direct message etc. Twitterific integrates with other desktop services beautifully and you can also set desktop preferences.

iChat, Adium, Skype are all compatible with Twitterific. Notification options are simple and straight, either you can set twitterific to remain on top of all windows or display a dialog box on receiving a new tweet. Twitterific has somewhat limited features and not full blown features like twhirl. Following users, unfollowing etc are not supported into the client. No URL shorteners are also available which limit its use.

The iPhone version of the twitterific comes in two versions. The free version has almost all the features of the paid version but features ad at the top of the public timeline. The paid version does not have any ads and packs in a couple of additional features too. The interface responsiveness has improved with new version and is the most popular iPhone twitter client. It also has an inbuilt browser for viewing links sent to you in tweets, so that you do not have to shuttle between Safari and Twitterific which can be time consuming as iPhone does not have multi-tasking features.

3. Spaz

Spaz has a completely different interface than the two mentioned above. The installation process and the following sign in procedure is the same. Spaz is a full blown desktop twitter client integrating all the twitter functions. Instead of displaying the tweets in a list format, Spaz displays them in boxes. This lends a completely different way of viewing your tweets.

Spaz has the ability to customise the CSS to give your interface a new look. It has an inbuilt CSS editing tool which allows to change the fonts, colors, box styles and also the layout you desire. But many of us are not comfortable with CSS, leaving us to use the default interface. Overall Spaz is a great twitter client, albeit a different from others out there.

4. TweetDeck

TweetDeck is very similar to its name. It puts all your tweets on the deck in panels and each panel publishing different information from twitter. The first panel displays your public timeline, the second one has has all the replies listed in one place and the third one shows direct messages sent out to you. Displaying them separately has obvious advantages over a single list showing them all.

After signing in, apart from the panels you get a top bar which lets you post tweets, shorten URLs, use twitpic and also a search button. The search button lets you search tweets locally or globally. Search opens up another panel alongside the already existing three which shows you the power of panels.

The obvious disadvantage of TweetDeck is the space that is uses. It occupies a large portion of your screen, hence multi-tasking takes a hit.

5. Snitter

Snitter is a cross platform twitter desktop client that works both on Windows and Mac OS X. It was the first twitter client to be based on Adobe’s AIR platform that has become highly popular for developing twitter clients. It has a cool user interface that lists your public time and has a top bar which lets you post tweets, archive, reply, list your friends and also check your followers.

It does lack a URL shortener and twitpic support though. Its looks can be customised using a variety of themes or tweaking the CSS. It has a large number of keyboard shortcuts pretty much like twitterific but they are hard to remember. Snitter does have some issues on Mac OS X which are largely due to Adobe’s AIR. Overall it is a great twitter client supported across platforms. It also has an alpha version for linux too!