How to choose the right Twitter client for you

Ok you joined today's in thing, the micro blogging site called Twitter and started posting your daily tidbits. So far so good. But then comes a time when your friends and follower base increase. Your needs for Twitter start changing and you wish, if only I could use twitter according to you specific needs. Twitter website today (despite adding a lot of functionalities) leaves a lot to be desired. The solution to this is (or rather solutions are) Twitter clients or twitter apps. There are different twitter clients for these specific requirements.

Twitter desktop clients

The choice of the twitter clients those suite your requirements depend on many factors. If you are indulging in twitter for your pleasure and using it only from your home (or office) PC, the suggestion for you would be to download a desktop client. TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop

are two top of the table twitter desktop clients.

TweetDeck lets you use Multiple accounts of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn etc. Option to customise it for columns, groups(to separate your personal and professional contacts) and saved searches, uploading photos (and videos), URL shortner (through bit.ly) and timeline filter by name or the text, make it easy to handle your updates.

I used Seesmic Desktop (and its other product twhirl) sometime back. You can view Home, Replies(Mentions), Direct Messages(DMs) and Sent columns for multiple twitter accounts. Columns can be created for saved searches and lists. It also has built-in support for Twitpic and a webcam function. Digsby is also a client which combine the Mail, IM and Social media interfaces together.

Twitter Web Apps
For the people who wish to tweet from multiple locations Web based Twitter clients are the best. Seesmic Web is one Twitter web client that comes to my mind. Seesmic Web is real-time Twitter web application which offers a clean interface and can be used in "list view" (looks like your webmail's inbox) or the "column view". You have separate columns for Sent, Favorite, Mentions, DM, Retweets (Mine/ by me/ by Others), Search, Lists and even the trending topics. But one thing that is missing is the media sharing (Pictures/ Videos etc) option. You can also try PeopleBrowsr and TwitHive as to web client options.

Twitter Mobile Apps
But if you are tech geek and wish to update your twitter account on the move you would have to look for the Mobile twitter clients. These small sit on your phone and make it easier to update your status from virtually anywhere. MobiScape is a good Twitter mobile application . With MobiScape besides checking your Timeline you can find Mentions, DMs (To you or By you) & Search (Keywords & Users). ReTweets/Replies are easier to make. Options to check particular user's info (Following, Followers, Tweets), current trends are some handy features.

With increasing penetration of iPhone and BlackBerry it gets imperative to talk about the clients for these platforms. Echofon is one iPhone Twitter client(it has Mac and Firefox versions too) that provide the option to easily view user’s profile, timeline, favorites, followers etc. Multiple Twitter accounts in Echofon is good. you can switch between accounts easily. The Background notification for mentions and messages help you using other apps while. Tweets having photos, videos, location, conversations etc. are tagged with smart little icons. If you use Mac desktop your unread tweets stay in sync in both desktop and iPhone. Mobile Twitter is another iphone client that I have used extensively and which can be downloaded from Apple Store. It offers a clean interface and separate the timelines and the messages (mentions & DMs).

UberTwitter is one good BlackBerry Twitter application. According to TwitStat, UberTwitter is used by 1.63 percent of Twitter users. You can attach your location, photos, vedios and UberTwitter add links leading to your photos (or location) using its own URL shortener. Tweet shrinking and twitter lists among others are some handy tools.

Twitter Collaboration Apps

For users tweeting for the official/client projects there is a requirement for applications which can be utilized by the team. HootSuite and CoTweet are two web based Twitter colaboration applications which can come handy.

Through HootSuite one can manage multiple social networks, multiple users over various social network accounts. It also provide the People button at the bottom which allows you to check who's following you and who you're following, see their Klout score and manage your Lists. The option of RSS/Atom feeds to publish to social networks, tweet scheduler, link stats visualizations, clickable hashtags, custom link parameters and recently added choice of URL shortner (Ow.ly / Ht.ly). Make it ideal tweet collaboration tool.

Cotweet is another collaboration tool for the twitter. It besides all the features of other collaboration tools, can be seen as workflow system built for CRM. It lets you manage up to five Twitter accounts through a single login. It works on assigned updates. You can assign an @ reply to a person responcible in your company for specific types of tweets. Once assigned tweets to go off your screen to "archive".

There are many more clients but I have covered the ones I have worked with. Hope this post is of good use to you all. Please feel free to add your comments and suggestions.