{Interactive Web Design Blog}

We here in the Interactive Design Program at Capilano U like to stay in the forefront of all things new and trendy. Hence our fervent worship of Twitter.

Twitter is a great web application that allows us to keep up with our friends and followers as well as all recent trending topics. I like to keep up on my Twitter account on the go. It’s the perfect activity while I’m waiting for the bus, having a coffee, or driving!

The big question is what Twitter App should I get for my iPhone. Well, here are the 5 best Apps I have used:

Tweetie 2

Price: $2.99

Website: atebits.com

Review: This is hands down my favorite Twitter App. Tweetie 2 is incredibly intuitive and feels really light when it is running on your phone. I like the way that everything in this app is based on the touch interface. If you want new tweets you just pull the list down to refresh, if you’d like to RT or reply to a tweet just swipe across the desired tweet to see the options. Tweetie 2 also allows you to have more than one account open and accessible at the same time in the single app. This is perfect for someone who constantly updates a personal account and a few work related accounts. Over all I dig how minimal this app feels, it is a must download for any Twitter’r.

TweetDeck

Price: Free!

Website: tweetdeck.com

Review: TweetDeck for iPhone is exactly what you’d expect if you’ve used TweetDeck for Mac. It pairs perfectly and has all the same features. I like it because of the column layout TweetDeck offers, it is easy to switch between “all friends”, “mentions”, “direct messages”, and any other searches you have going. This layout system makes it straightforward to keep track of specific peoples tweets, or any hash tags you are currently following. If you are someone who likes to save lots of searches or hash tags then I think TweetDeck for iPhone might be the perfect app for you.

Twitterriffic

Price: Free! ($4.99 for Premium)

Website: twitterrific.com

Review: Twitterriffic is another straightforward Twitter app. All your friends tweets are displayed in a single column with all the controls in a small menu bar below. Here you can do all the usual things… reply, RT, or make a new posting. The free app was alright and I thought it was worth listing here but I did find it to be lacking a few features and thought that it was kind of difficult to figure out at first. Based on my experience using the free version I didn’t see the sense in upgrading to the premium version.

Twittelator

Price: Free! ($4.99 for Pro)

Website: stone.com

Review: Twittelator is similar in features and functions to Tweetie 2. I found it to be simplistic in style and thought that it worked great. The free version is ad supported, but I found it to be good enough for my testing purposes. I’d recommend giving this app a try if you are looking for a generally basic Twitter app.

Simply Tweet

Price: $4.99 (Lite version Free!)

Website: motionobj.com

Review: Simply Tweet is a totally usable Twitter app. There isn’t anything in particular that seems to be wrong with it, but I wasn’t particularly impressed with it either. It does have a clean design and is seems simple to use, however at $4.99 I was kind of expecting something awesome. I can’t make a download reccomendation on this app, just based on the fact I don’t believe it offers enough value at $4.99, maybe try the lite version first…

There you have my Top 5 Twitter app’s… some good, some almost good but I did definitely think that they were all worthy of this list.

As a Vancouver web design student I hope my research on the usability of popular iPhone app’s should be on target since I have spent the last 2 years learning how to analyze this stuff… I hope that you think so too! If you are interested in learning about Usability Design or other Interactive Design related topics check out my program up at Capilano University

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