There is no “best” Twitter application, this I’ve decided. It seems that of the three I use, one has a feature I long for when not using it.

Twitterific

Twitterific is simple, straight forward, I can post from NetNewsWire and it has awesome keyboard shortcuts. Plus, the icon is the best of any of them, for what it’s worth.

But it lacks some key functionality, such as Retweeting and being able to view user details in the app. Simply put: Twitterific is limited in functionality.

Twhirl

Twhirl has just about as much functionality as you could want: Retweeting, looking up users in the app, follow, unfollow, you name it.

In fact, there is little about Twhirl I don’t like. It was my app of choice until TweetDeck came along.

TweetDeck

I’ve heard countless people praise TweetDeck, so I thought I’d give it a shot. My first impressions: Ugly icon, not the prettiest interface but WOW, what you can do with it.

TweetDeck allows you to organize people by groups, which makes reading tweets a lot easier. I’ve got groups for close friends, Mississippi folks, tech folks, news, etc.

You can also set up groups for searches. Want to know what people are saying about an app or a movie? It’s easy enough to do. This is extremely useful for a blog that I manage and for keeping up with certain apps I’m watching.

And the only thing I can’t do in TweetDeck that I can do in Twitterific or Twhirl is post from NetNewsWire (Twitterific only), which while nice is not in the least bit essential.

Of course, I’ve noticed that TweetDeck doesn’t always get good information back from Twitter on people I follow. For instance, I was trying to add someone to a group by viewing their profile (which is a nice little tool), but when I did so TweetDeck said I wasn’t following them. When I went into the setup screen for the group itself, I was able to add them, though. So, a minor glitch. (I’ve also noticed a few times that TweetDeck cannot tell if I’m following someone or not.)

There are three things I’d like to see changed about TweetDeck:

1. Every time it receives an update, the app unhides itself. Granted, it stays in the background, but that’s some really annoying behavior.
2. Users should be able to set sound notifications based on updates, replies and direct messages. As it stands now, TweetDeck either plays a sound notification for all updates or for none at all.
3. In creating a group, I’d love to be able to create and “Everyone Else” group that lumps all the people I’m following who are not assigned to another group into a group by themselves. Right now, it must be done it manually.

I’ll give TweetDeck a run of a few weeks and either settle on it or move back to Twhirl. Of course, if the developer ever makes the first two above changes, I doubt Twhirl will be able to compete for my attention.

Tagged as: netnewswire, tweetdeck, twhirl, twitter, twitterific