What to use for Tweeting

Once you make the decision to sign up for Twitter, you'll soon find you get annoyed having to log on and off the website all the time to tweet.

Thankfully there are a few free programmes out there which take the hassle out of updating your status and sit nicely on your desktop enabling you to tweet to your heart's content.

I've selected four programmes and taken them for a testdrive in the hope that it'll help you narrow your choice. These reviews aren't intended for power users of Twitter who'll have to go into the minutest of details to decide what best fits them - these are for the beginner making their first tentative Twitter steps.

Note: All of these programmes use Adobe Air, which is also free, so if you want to use any of them then you will have to install it first.  The great thing about Air is that it allows all of these applications to be run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Seesmic Desktop (click for full size)


Seesmic Desktop is the least favourite out of the four I tested and is developed by the same people who developed twhirl. Functionality wise it doesn't differ too much from any of the others, but I just didn't like the look and the style.

To be fair, Seesmic Desktop is still developing, and a new version with also integrates with Facebook was launched this week.

It's still missing functionality, like the ability so see any Twitter trends, which means it's of no use to me at the moment.

The great thing about Seesmic Desktop is that it handles multiple Twitter accounts and, because it's in early development, it's likely to only get better.

Spaz (click for full size)


Spaz looks pretty good and works pretty well - although I'm not convinced about the name. The things I use most when tweeting - URL shortners and picture uploading - are accessed through the menu at the very top and not through the main interface.

This causes a loss of focus and the small increase in time it takes to do these things means it's unlikely to ever be my tool of choice.

Spaz is likely to suit someone who only wants to write tweets without bothering with URLS or picture links.

Tweetdeck (click for full size)

From the moment I opened Tweetdeck I liked both the look of it and the fact the functionality was right there. Unlike the other programmes on test you can get a cloud view of what people are tweeting about, meaning breaking news is instantly visable to you.

Tweetdeck also has support for 12 seconds, which could be the next big internet thing - instead of writing your updates you provide 12 seconds of video.

A bonus is the ability to change the font and colours, meaning you can have it better integrated into your desktop, as well as integration with your Facebook account.

The biggest downside to Tweetdeck is that it only handles a single Twitter account, which is a deal breaker for me. Chances are, if I could integrate two accounts into Tweetdeck, it would be my application of choice.

You may not have that requirement, in which case Tweetdeck might just be perfect for you.

twhirl (click for full size)


twhirl is my current favourite, and the one I'm using on my desktop. It looks good and I've got URL shortners, image uploaders, filters, favourites and followers all within easy reach of where I type updates.

Unfortunately it lacks some of the functionality of the more impressive Tweetdeck, but it's support for multiple accounts is key.

The downside is twhirl is also the most memory intensive of the applications, which means if you have a small amount of memory you might want to avoid having more than one account open at any one time.

Conclusion:
Functionality-wise there's not a huge amount of difference between the tools. I imagine some of you will look at twhirl and decide it's interface is too busy and the minimal style of Spaz is more to your liking.

All I can suggest is give them a try and see what suits your style. The programme downloads are small, which means even those of you still on dial-up aren't excluded.

However, if you have only one Twitter account to update,  I strongly recommend Tweetdeck.  It's fast, configurable and should handle all your requirements.

Winner (if you update a single account): Tweetdeck
Winner (if you update multiple accounts): twhirl

One to watch: Seesmic Desktop

If you have any others you think I should test, or want more in-depth details about functionality then send me an e-mail at techtalks@ymail.com or leave a comment on the blog.