At Last: A Twitter Desktop Application I Can Read

I’ve been using the Seesmic Twitter desktop application for a couple of weeks now and I like it.

Mostly because I can read its screen easily.

Its closest competitor is probably TweetDeck, which I reviewed here.

Seesmic and TweetDeck have a lot of similarities, but also some important differences.

Here are some thoughts on Seesmic.  

As with TweetDeck, on Seesmic you can define different columns (or panes) and arrange how they’re displaid on your screen. I have columns set up for the search that I run each day, replies and a group of friends who I follow more closely.

Some Seesmic features that I like:

1. You can enter your Bit.ly or other link-shrinking account details, and Seesmic will automatically add new links that you tweet to your link-shrinker account so you can track clicks and activity on them
2. You can click on 4 main options (Home, Replies, Private and Sent) and see the timeline in the left hand column. You can also separate any of these columns so that they’re permanently displaid. I particularly liked that you can view Sent tweets easily.
3. The black text on a white background is MUCH easier to read than the User Interface on TweetDeck and Destroy Twitter – at least for me with my ageing eyes

Some things I don’t like:

1. It doesn’t recognise and suppress tweets that you’ve read. So each time I log on I see all my past replies, search results and all messages in my Friends group, even if I’ve already read and cleared them. That means that I have to try to recall which ones I’ve replied to and that’s a pain.
2. It also doesn’t mark tweets you’ve read within your session. Irritating if you’re interrupted by a phone call, for example, because you have to glance through each tweet to find the last one you read.
3. It doesn’t display the history of a tweet conversation within the application. If you click the ‘In reply to xxxx’ it fires up your browser and takes you to the Twitter web page with your tweet. Displaying the sequence of tweets within the application is one of my favourite things about Destroy Twitter.
4. It’s not as intuitive as either TweetDeck or Destroy Twitter. I was getting quite frustrated trying to set up a Friends group and I can’t add friends unless I can see a tweet from them.

But overall it’s the Twitter desktop app that I’m using by default now – because it is SO much easier to read than either TweetDeck or Destroy Twitter.

It runs on Adobe Air, so you can run it on either Macs or PCs.

Other Articles You Might Like:

1. Managing the Twitter Information Overload
2. How Do You Use Twitter?
3. DestroyTwitter and Improve Your Efficiency
4. My Twitter Account Was Hacked
5. Is Twitter The New List?

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