In search of Twitter client nirvana
Why I Need A New Twitter Client
I’ve gone through a number of twitter clients, switching as I’ve found new features that I consider ‘must have’ items. Currently I use echofon. Until today I was happy with it however, I just hit a very large snag. There are many user streams I’d like to ‘sample’ without adding noise to my main stream; following these streams is out of the question as I’m only interested in small percentage of their tweets. Lists seem like the perfect mechanism to deal with this problem. I’ve created a private list called ‘dip into’ that I can jump over and scan from time to time without cluttering my main stream of tweets I’m always interested in. In addition to ‘dip into’, I have a number of other lists for things that I’m interested in but don’t consider time sensitive1. Unfortunately, Echofon’s handling of lists is horribly lacking. It only tracks new tweets/last read for the last list you looked at in the last account you had open. This means, I have to remember where I was in most lists I’ve created; an extreme non-starter. I have come to the conclusion that I either have to stop using lists or replace echofon.
Must Have Features
- Mac OS X
- I use Mac OS X.
- Multiple Accounts
- I have multiple accounts and need to be able to easily switch between them.
- Threaded Conversations
- Twitter became far more useful to me when I started using a client that supported threading conversations.
- Remember Last Read Tweet Per View
- If the client doesn’t support remembering the last read tweet and returning you back there, it isn’t useful it me. It needs to remember the last read tweet in each view I’m in: main stream by account, lists etc.
- Account Control
- Echofon has a feature I’ve found to be a massive time saver: Click on an account name and it opens up a side window with a their tweet stream plus controls change lists the account is in along with follow, unfollow, block and report as spam options.
Nice To Have Features
- Built in Translation
- I follow non-english speakers and it would be nice to be able to press a translate button to see what their non-english tweets are. Bonus points for being able to set specific users to be auto-translated.
- Muting
- Ability to mute a user or hashtag for a period of time
- Saved Searches
- Access to commonly used searches via the client is nice. I tend to do a lot of searches for smalltalk and clojure looking for new people to follow.
Can You Help?
If you know of a twitter client that meets my needs, please drop me a line via twitter or email.
1 e.g. @SeanTAllen/services