10 July 2008 7 Comments

It’s the battle of Twitter desktop applications! Which one will come out on top? Which one will survive the battle for Twitter supremacy? Twhirl vs. Tweetdeck.

With all the hype going around right now about both of these applications for desktop Twittering, I thought we should look at each and see which one comes out on top. I’m not going to talk about which one is better, but which one fits better overall into your lifestyle.

Personally I like them both. I can’t see one way or the other which one is "better" but the differences are glaring. Here’s my little rundown.

Twhirl

Twhirl is the first one to come along. It’s the one that most people are familiar with. Twhirl runs on the Adobe AIR platform and I think does a pretty good job at what it does.

Twhirl brings your Twitter timeline right to your desktop and allows you to reply, send direct mesages, and post your own tweets. You can also search for people, follow new people, and check out individual timelines to catch up on conversations. It’s basically Twitter on your desktop.

You can change the colors to match your own personality (I chose to stick with the basic blue) and configure it for how often you want it to update. You can also run different accounts on it, if you have more than one, and Twhirl even works with other social media websites.

The feature that I like the most is that is even pulls in FriendFeed updates. You can also add your Jaiku account to keep up to date with that also.

All in all, I like Twhirl. Sure, just like anything else, it has its problems. I hate it when it pauses because it reached its limit, but since Twitter upgraded their API that hasn’t happened yet.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is the new kid on the block. And since it hit, everyone has been singing its praises. I have to admit that I did not like it at first. I thought it was an ugly interface, weird to figure out, and it just wouldn’t work for me.

Since then, or rather since the upgrade, I am starting to like it a little more every time I use it.

As you can see from the screen shot the user interface is black. So far, that’s it. I guess it’s alright, I’m just not that crazy about it.

Anyway, what Tweetdeck does is it aggregates your Twitter timeline onto your desktop just like Twhirl. However, it does it a little differently. Tweetdeck has separate columns for your timeline, your replies, and your direct messages. This way you can see everything at a quick glance instead of scrolling down to see if you got replies like on Twhirl.

Tweetdeck also has a neat group setting. When you create a ‘group’ by bunching people together it makes another column. Nice little addition. It also has a search function. This is probably the best part of Tweetdeck. Not only can you search your own timeline but it also searches Summize for you. And puts it into another column.

You can switch columns around, move them left or right, and even exit out of them. Tweetdeck is a pretty good desktop application for Twitter. See that’s the thing. You can only stream Twitter right now with Tweetdeck. Since it’s in beta there will probably be improvements along the way. In fact, Tweetdeck even lets us users make requests and comments.

Which one will you choose?

As you can see it’s all a matter of choice. I don’t think anyone can say, with any measure of certainty or even respectability, which one is “better”. I use them both. I like each one for their own traits. I probably use Twhirl a little more because it has FriendFeed capabilities but that’s the only reason.

In the end, a Twitter desktop client is a Twitter desktop client. I just wish someone would hurry and build one that can handle all social media websites. Now that would be the overall winner.

What do you think? Which one do you use and why? Leave a comment below.

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