verbatim: The How of Twitter

Yesterday I talked about why I use Twitter; today the subject is how I use Twitter.

I don't know too many people who access Twitter solely by going to the main Twitter website, twitter.com. Sure, it works fine, but there are countless more convenient, more aesthetically pleasing alternatives. I'll talk about just a few of them here, and mention what I like about them—and why, in my opinion, The One Ring to Rule Them All has yet to be developed.

My favorite Twitter application is also web-based; it's iTweet.net. Here's what I especially love about it:

1. It has a simple, pleasing interface.
2. It auto-refreshes (that right there should get you off the regular Twitter web page in a hurry).
3. Replies have a little arrow icon, so you can click to find out what tweet someone is replying to.
4. You can retweet or reply with just a single click.
5. Shortening URLs, adding photos via TwitPic, and inserting funky symbols are all simple.

iTweet.net rarely goes down and serves my needs well. But I also keep Twhirl open on my desktop at all times. Twhirl is Adobe Air software that you download (for free). Twhirl does everything iTweet.net does, but here's what else it does that iTweet.net doesn't:

1. I can set it to give me an audio alert whenever I get a reply or a direct message. Granted, this doesn't help much when I'm away from my Mac (which is, like, never...), but I really appreciate it when I happen to be sitting here anyhow.
2. Not only is it easy to retweet and reply, it's just as easy to send someone a direct message with a single click.
3. Twhirl has color-coded tabs that you can toggle through, for your main Twitter stream, your replies, your direct messages, and your own tweets. iTweet.net has this too, but it takes a couple nanoseconds longer to reload them on the web than it does in this stand-alone app. I'm in a hurry, people!

So why don't I use Twhirl solo, without iTweet.net? For one thing, Twhirl lags a wee bit behind real time (I said, I'm in a hurry!), and it also has a few little annoyances, like it doesn't recognize the standard Mac "undo" keystroke (command-z).

Lots of people swear by Tweetdeck, which I have tried to love but just can't. The interface is so crowded and overwhelming that it just upsets me. But ... it has one feature that I admire greatly: It lets you create "groups," so if you're busy and want to see what was tweeted recently by just your coworkers, or just your favorite friends, or just the Popular Kids, or whatever, you can do that easily. As much as I like that feature, it's not worth it to me for the rest of Tweetdeck's inconveniences. Plus, it has a bug (perhaps Mac only) wherein the spacebar is disabled whenever the shift key is held down; Twhirl had this same bug for a while but managed to fix it.

There are zillions of other ways to use Twitter out there (including apps for the iPhone—I use the freebie Twittelator and am happy with it), but none of them have certain features I would just love. To wit:
1. I would like to choose, on a tweet-by-tweet basis, whether my tweets get cross-posted to Facebook. I've gone back and forth on this, and now I've finally disabled the Twitter-Facebook relationship. I found that I was self-censoring on Twitter because I knew that everything was going to show up (to a very different audience) on Facebook. (Granted, this is probably more of a Twitter and/or Facebook thing and isn't something an outside developer could do.)
2. I would like to choose, on a friend-by-friend basis, whether I see all of a friend's replies, only those replies to my friends, or no replies at all. (Again, this is probably more of a Twitter thing and not doable by a software developer.)
3. I would like to be able to hover my mouse over shortened URLs and see what real URL they link to. I think I'd be able to tell right away whether it's something I've already seen or something that's just not of interest—or perhaps very much of interest.

I've been saving this post for so long in my brain that now I've forgotten some of the features I'd like to see in a Twitter app. Help me out here—what would your dream app do?

Update (3/5/09): Just remembered something else on my wish list, although again, this probably doesn't fall into the developer category:

4. I wish the Twitter widget in my blog's sidebar would weed out the replies (signified by the @ symbol before someone's username). Those make no sense read out of context. Even Facebook figured that one out!