Mac Monday: Top 5 Twitter Desktop Clients for Your Mac
Jun 1st, 2009 by Ealeal
Unless you’ve been living under an Oprah-proof rock for the past few months, you’ve probably heard a thing or two about Twitter, the micro-blogging service that’s managed to rock the web and stir up a craze, from its early adopters to the latest celebs who are signing on and tweeting their hearts out.
While using the website itself is a decent way to tweet and get the latest updates from the feeds you follow, I find that that for a true web-addict like myself, who already works with dozens of open tabs at a time, substituting my Twitter-dependency to the use of desktop clients has been a refreshing change, especially with some of the great Adobe Air-based clients available for Mac users, providing a sleek and very intuitive experience. However, with so many fresh desktop clients surfacing out there, it can be a little confusing – so, which Twitter desktop client is the ultimate pairing for your Mac? Below is a rundown of some of the best Twitter desktop clients for Mac – depending on your needs and use of Twitter, one of these is bound to be the ideal Tweeting solution for you.
Tweetie:
As an iPhone fiend, Tweetie was the one of the more obvious choices for me when their desktop client for the Mac was released, as Tweetie had already managed to secure a spot as favorite on my iPhone. One of the greatet advantages of Tweetie is the enabled support for multiple accounts, meaning I can navigate both my personal Twitter account and 5min’s Twitter account, for example, all without the troubles of multiple sessions, login frustrations or any hassle. Interestingly enough, Tweetie was first developed for the iPhone and only then migrated to the Mac OS X. Another huge pro with Tweetie is the handy little bookmartklet, which allows you to morph any web page you are browsing to a tweet in a simple, straight-forward way – a great idea if you’d like to, say, share links to interesting videos with your followers on Twitter. Using Tweetie, a double-click on any Tweet will enable you to view the entire conversation, which is a great way to stay in the loop. So, what’s the best part about Tweetie? Since it’s not based on Adobe AIR, the program’s memory footprint is a petite one, allowing you to tweet your little heart out without having to worry about your Mac slowing down, freeing more memory for other awesome things, like playing Plants vs. Zombies.
The bitter side-dish? Tweetie’s offering is displayed in a single-column mode – this may be a downer for you if you prefer to receive all your Twitter information in one go, including @replies and direct messages (DM). Personally, I find Tweetie to be a wonderful desktop client despite this drawback, as it allows me to maintain the same experience I have with Tweetie on my iPhone.
TweetDeck:
When I first started to use a desktop client for tweeting, I hopped aboard TweetDeck, one of the more veteran desktop clients on the Twitter scene. There are many wonderful things about TweetDeck, but the real pitch was its super-easy searchability, and an integration with TwitScoop, a web service that tracks trending topics throughout the Twittersphere. TweetDeck also includes the option to receive status updates from your Facebook friends, meaning you’ll have all the updates you need in one place. One of TweetDeck’s awesome features is that it allows you to create groups of different users and categories, such as “Work” or “Friends”, and view them each in their own display.
The possible downer is the fact that being Adobe AIR-based, overdosing on TweetDeck may lead to your Mac behaving a wee bit slower as its memory is devoured by an incessant rain of feeds. On a sidenote, after about a month and a half of using TweetDeck, I developed somewhat of a Pavlovian reflex to the sounds the app’s alerts voice with each incoming update, and ended up feeling a little like Dwight Schrute. Bottom line is this – if you need ALL your Twitter data concentrated in one place and a few sleek columns, TweetDeck is the desktop client for you.
Twhirl:
Twhirl is another friendly Twitter desktop client based on Adobe AIR, created by the awesome folks at Seesmic and compatible with both Windows and Mac platforms. Twhirl also happens to be the more social of the bunch, if you ask me, connecting to multiple Twitter, FriendFeed, identi.ca and Seesmic accounts, as well as smooth integration with Twitter-based services such as TwitPic, TweetScan, Ping.fm and more. Obsessive types like all the wonderful Tweeples on my team will surely appreciate Twhirl’s spell-check feature, too – because even if you’re confined to 140 characters, you shouldn’t be out there embarrassing yourself.
Mac Lounge:
Mac Lounge is another terrific desktop client tailor-made for Macs and iPhones, which also supports multiple accounts. The interface is extremely intuitive and will be quite familiar to Mac users, not to mention it’s very easy on the eyes. All of the frequently-used functions are conveniently located on the left side-bar, including the option to view all your tweets, everyone on the public timeline, your friends/followers, sent and received direct messages, everyone you follow, and so on. A big selling point for Mac Lounge is the ease with which you can follow entire conversation threads, displayed as reply chains. With Mac Lounge, you can easily choose from a wide range of options for every tweet – retweet, link to a tweet, copy a tweet, etc. The app is currently in beta, and I can’t wait to see what more they have in store.
Nambu:
If Twhirl is the super-social of the bunch, I’d label Nambu as the cosmopolitan desktop client – in fact, Nambu enables you to translate any Tweet into plain English with a simple keyboard shorcut. Nifty, huh? As with TweetDeck, you can create groups to better help you track your followers and the different types of feeds and information you receive. Nambu is also great for lazy Tweeples, as it auto-completes usernames as you enter them. All in all, Nambu is like a hybrid between EventBox and TweetDeck, albeit with lesser integration with third-party services such as Facebook and Friendfeed. The real cherry on top? Definitely the de-clutter factor of Nambu, which automatically organizes your replies into conversation threads, resembling text message history, so you can keep abreast of updates with a breeze. Too bad Nambu’s iPhone app is not as slick, but hey – you’ve got Tweetie for that.
