QuickAdvice: Weet Brings Polish To Your Twitter Experience
Weet ($0.99) by Craig Merchant is another Twitter app for made for your iPhone.
Despite Twitter for iPhone being the 'official' app, that isn't stopping developers from making fresh new Twitter apps for iPhone users. The newest one to come along is Weet.
I have to admit, I'm madly in love with the user interface of Weet. I've been a long time Osfoora user, but even that was a bit lacking in the interface field. I don't use Twitter for iPhone because the icon reminds me of all the old spam accounts with the default avatar (that avatar is now an egg, much nicer). But the icon for Weet and the interface is simple, sleek, and polished. It's clear that a lot of time went into designing the app, and I will give them high marks for this.
But it's not perfect [yet].
The initial setup is to log in with your primary account - if you have any other accounts, they can be added in after. You are then taken to your timeline, and you'll be pleased to know that this app has implemented the infamous pull-to-refresh feature that originated in Twitter for iPhone (formerly Tweetie 2). The timeline is in a silvery interface, and mentions appear blue in the timeline, with your own tweets showing up in orange.
The bottom menu bar shows mentions and DMs as well as Search by default, but there are also Lists, Retweets, and Favorites that can be rearranged by drag-and-drop with the 'Customize' option. If there are new tweets in the Mentions or DMs tabs, there will be a blue dot to notify you (much like what Twitter for iPhone does). Double tap the tab icons to mark all read, which is always handy.
When a tweet is viewed, the screen will display the tweet in the top half, with several options in the bottom half, including: Reply, Retweet (only new style, sorry old-fashioned retweeters and via'ers), Favorite, Mail Tweet, Read Later (if there is a link included), and Translate.
The translate feature is nice, since it will actually change the text in the tweet, and not just show a little pop-up window like other apps. This is useful in case you want to reply to it, so you can still see it as you type. Want to view someone's profile? You can do so by tapping on the user's name when viewing a tweet.
But there is also an easier way! You can do it by tap-and-hold a tweet in the timeline. This will bring up Reply, Favorite, Mail, and Profile options. Really handy and eliminates some unnecessary steps.
The Accounts/Settings screen lets you manage multiple accounts as well as various settings. Settings include what the display name should be (username or real name) and what language to translate tweets into. Instapaper and Read It Later are integrated, as well as various photo/video services.
However, there's no option to set how often the timeline should refresh automatically - I've been having to refresh the timeline myself.
I found it a bit weird that there are different services for both photo and video, with the exception of CloudApp. Posterous is available as well, but only for photo, which is odd since it can host videos. There should also be more photo hosting services, since popular services such as img.ly and yfrog are missing. Hopefully the developers can address this in a future update.
If you use CloudApp or bit.ly for links, you can add them here. Unfortunately if you prefer another URL shortening service, you are left out in the cold for now.
Weet has a lot of potential, it's just missing a few features that I hope to see in a future update. I'm simply in love with the interface though - it's just smooth and nice to look at. If you're looking for something minimalistic then this would suit you well, even in version 1.0.
I may even consider replacing my other Twitter apps with this one alone. At the price of a dollar, you can't really go wrong!
