Twitter Roundup – Hunting for the best twitter app on webOS

Twitter…its kind of a big deal right now. According to recent studies done on the intertubes, the world tweets over 27 million times a day…this averages out to be about 1.25 million tweets an hour, or if you go really crazy, that is about 312 tweets every single second. So having a good Twitter client on webOS is absolutely essential right? Well, I have good news…there are a lot of them (6 at last count) even at this early stage of the game. Some are kinda meh…others are pretty awesome. In this review, I am taking them all on to show you which ones are worth your time (and money), and which ones should be left alone. Off we go…

Freebies!

Tweet Fleet – 8 bit Development

So for our first review, lets start with something simple…reeeeeally simple. Tweet Fleet allows you to post to your twitter account and attach an image from your phone. No timelines, favorites, or anything else that you will see with the other apps on this list (including some of the free ones).

I am all about simple apps with a laser focus, but this one strikes me as toooo simple. Twitter is a two-way communication tool. You tweet to the world, and the world tweets back. An app that does not cover at least these two basics strikes me as incomplete.

Spaz – Funkatron Productions

Next we have Spaz. This is currently one of the most popular webOS twitter apps with a reported 62,000+ downloads from the App Catalog, and I believe it is with good reason. For a free twitter client, you can’t really expect too much more than what is delivered here. Spaz is technically a multi-platform microblogging app, but the other two platforms (identi.ca and loconi.ca) are some I have never heard of (maybe I am just old or something…).

Once you setup your account (you can have multiple accounts if you wish) Spaz immediately shows your timeline. You can also, post, view favorites, and go searching around twitter. One nice thing when posting is you can post up pictures, shorten URLs, and even shorten your text (with various “twitterspeak” abbreviations). Now personally, I am not a fan of leet speak, twitter speak, or any other speak that slices and dices the English language, so this feature holds little appeal for me, but I know it is probably very useful for the 99% of people who disagree with me on this.

The look and feel of Spaz is solid, but there isn’t anything that you haven’t seen before. It is also worth noting that the developers have mentioned that there is a pay version in the works. Will be interesting to see how that turns out.

Twee Free – Delicious Morsel

I will be going into depth with Twee below in the pay section. The free version is the same as the pay version minus:

• Notifications
• Nearby tweet search
• Twitturly
• StockTwits

Pay Apps

Tiny Twitter – Tiny Byte Software -  $1.99

This one is a bit odd for a pay app because it is a lot less functional than most of the free ones. With this app you can tweet (no images), and you can see your timeline. It also has a very rudimentary notification system. That’s it. That is the entire application. If you compare this app to any of the other pay apps I will discuss below, and most of the free ones above, it is easy to recommend that you leave this guy alone.

Yak – JM Productions – $2.99

Ironically, the most expensive pay app (it actually ties for first place with Twee), it is also the plainest. The UI is very default, and the feature set is just a bit more robust than the free Spaz (namely it has a mentions option). It has everything you need in a twitter app, but when comparing it to the other pay options, it just doesn’t hold up. There is also a missing feature…you can’t refresh your timeline without going to another tab and coming back. This isn’t a big deal from a practicality perspective, but when every other app has it, you start to miss it.

Twee - Delicious Morsel – $2.99

As mentioned above, Twee comes in two flavors…free and paid. They are essentially the same except, as you might expect, the pay version comes with some extra goodies. I have to say, I really like Twee, and at first it was going to be my top pick; however, as I tested more, a few issues came up that knocked it back down a bit.

First, the good. I love the look of Twee. The app is, by far, the best looking Twitter application on the Catalog right now. They have a custom menu at the bottom, bright blue headers, and just a nice look all around. Also, it’s feature list is equal to the top pick.

The problems with the app are twofold. First, I left my pre on for several hours with all the apps with notifications turned on…Twee didn’t give me any (Tweed, the other app with notifications told me I had 3). Considering this is a premium feature (i.e. you pay for it), this was a big disappointment. But what really struck me is Twee’s odd memory use that I found completely by accident. I was having issues running out of memory when I only had a single card open. To test this I got an app from Preware called JSTop which basically acts like a Task Manager for your phone. While I was figuring out what was going on, I noticed that there was a process for Twee even though it wasn’t running. I closed it down, and reopened Twee again and, sure enough, the app quickly spawned two processes. If you close the app down, one stays open. Now at first I thought it was the notification process still running. Problem was…at the time I had notifications turned off. Now, I am no webOS dev guru, and there very well may be a good reason for this, but no other twitter app (including others with notifications on) seemed to have this problem. If you are from Delicious Morsel, or know what is going on, please let me know if I am mistaken about this. Now to be fair…the second process doesn’t take much memory at all, so unless you are really pushing your phone’s capabilities, then this probably won’t be noticeable.

The question remains…is the paid app worth it? Well, as you might have guessed, that depends. Here are my thoughts on the additional features.

• Nearby - This lets you know if anyone in a configurable radius around your GPS location is tweeting something. Now under most circumstances, this seems a bit unnecessary, but I could see specific instances where this could be a really cool feature. For instance, I went to the U2 concert in October. Being able to see all the tweets that were firing out about the concert would have been very cool. I could also see this as a way to see what is going on in terms of local events.
• Twitturly - This is an interesting site that tracks what URLs are important in the twitterverse and how many people are including them. This may be a good way to find some of the stranger events that are happening, but for news, I prefer Google News…
• Stocktwits - This is a financial site that keeps track of all the finance related tweets in real time. If this is of interest to you, then you probably already own this app (or should go and get it right this second).
• Notifications - As I mentioned before, this didn’t work very well for me, but this, to me, is easily the biggest reason to buy (other than just supporting the devs, which is always a good reason).

Tweed – Pivotal Labs – $1.99

At first, Tweed struck me as pretty bare bones (which surprised me since it is one of the top selling apps on the Catalog). This is because the guys at Pivotal went for a minimalist design here (as opposed to Twee’s flashier UI). Which is better will be a matter of opinion (I like Twee), but it definitely gets the job done.

In Tweed’s design, all of the functionality is hidden behind a bright blue button on the top right. When you click on it you find everything you could want in twitter app. More importantly, all the functionality works very well.

• Basics (timeline, trends, url shorteners, images, mentions, favorites, geotagging)
• Nearby search
• Notifications (these work)
• Public tweets (this basically shows you the timeline of all of twitter)
• Landscape mode

Aside from big blue, there are a few other touches that are subtle, but very handy. For instance, there is a little chat bubble icon next to some tweets. This is a cool little feature that lets you know (and quickly look up) if two or more people are tweeting back and forth. It is also easy to jump top to bottom or bottom to top (as opposed to flicking around a lot). Nice touch.

Now it should be noted that there is a free version of Tweed on the Catalog (called Tweed Trial). It is crazy popular with over 265,000 downloads, and it is a good way to see what the app is all about. However, it should be noted that the guys over at Pivotal have said that the free version is temporary and is no longer supported. It is version .9.1.6 and it always will be. Currently it is similar in functionality to the pay version (version 1.1.1), but over time the pay version will grow and grow, while the free version stays where it is. Plus, you never know when they will pull the plug on it completely. So keep that in mind.

Gallery