Twitter app review: Tweetie vs. Blogo

Tweetie for Mac finally came out yesterday, cheered by many a Twitter-nerd. I’d tried Nambu recently, but just couldn’t get the hang of it (for one, it didn’t show me all my friends when I tried to create groups), and Tweetdeck is just too overwhelming for my style– as Nezua pointed out once, “It’s the Deathstar of Twitter clients.” My Twitter usage is pretty heavy, but I don’t like to have too many things to look at, and I like feeling a “stopping by the water cooler” vibe when I pop in. So, I’ve been using Blogo, which is actually first and forement a regular blogging client. The microblog/Twitter features are simply lovely, though, and I’ve been using for about 4 months now.

But hey, I’m a magpie and I like shiny new things, so I decided to give Tweetie a whirl. Both apps cost something, by the way: Blogo is $25 after a full-featured 21-day trial period (but it includes a robust blog editor); Tweetie for Mac is $14.95 till early May, then will be $19.95, with an ad-supported free option.

Here are my pros (+) and cons (-) for each app:

Tweetie
+ Better multiple account integration: the timelines of each identity are kept separate (- after you get over a weird bug)
+ A menubar icon turns blue when someone replies to you
- If you tell it to autoscroll to the top when new tweets arrive, you have to manually scroll down then up to make the “new tweets” blue dot notification disappear
- There’s no easy way to go to a friend’s timeline if they’re not in your current tweets
+ Continuing to scroll through a list of tweets automatically retrieves more
+ Love the fade ins and fade outs, it’s very Quicksilver-like
+ Shows user info within the app; also tells you if selected person is following you
- Can’t reply to multiple people

Blogo
+ There’s a dropdown menu that allows you to view mentions, friends, all followers
+ There’s a separate another dropdown to show individual friends’ timelines
+ Shows the number of API requests for that hour and what time it will reset
+ Puts retweet info up front (this is my style — I do “RT @username: their tweet”
- Only shows 20 tweets at a time; have to go to Twitter website for more
- Have to go to the site to see user info, too
+ Shows current trending topics in initial search screen

Neither app does groups, and both have seriously slick Mac interfaces. I’m going to keep doubling up for another week, but so far, Blogo still has my heart.

Posted Tue., Apr 21, 2009 in Tech

Tagged: blogo • microblog • tweetie • twitter • twitter app • twitter client

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