Review: Twitterrific
by Ian
May 9, 2009
Overview
Twitter apps are perhaps the most competitive of any category in the App Store and the Iconfactory has proven in its 2.0 release of Twitterrific that it means to dominate this space. The original Twitterrific on iPhone looked great but, over time, it was overshadowed by more feature-rich offerings like Twittelator Pro and Tweetie. Not anymore - multiple accounts, search, trends - it's all here. It's far easier to navigate than the competition and it looks great. In addition, the free ad-supported version is fully featured, so you're really missing out not to at least try it.Features
A couple weeks ago we were ready to publish our review of Twitterrific when we found out 2.0 was on its way. If we had published then, this section would've been pretty tiny - you could send out a standard 140 character message, share your location or upload a photo. A clever javascript trick (also utilized by Twittelator Pro) let you use a bookmark to take any web page you're looking at in Mobile Safari and copy that link into a tweet in the app. You could also tap on links and look at the resulting web page without having to leave the app. That was Twitterrific before 2.0. Now you can do all that plus manage multiple accounts, search and see trends, shorten URLs, email tweets, link to individual tweets, retweet, follow and unfollow, favorite and mark individual tweets and filter the timeline on the fly so you can see only replies, direct messages or favorites.
You can also tap on a tweet and easily view a conversation thread between users, which to me is a killer feature as it easily lets you figure out what people have been talking about. For people like me who subscribe to all @replies, this option means I can figure out what the heck everyone is talking about. I had some mixed results using it though because it didn't seem to work on all conversations. Gedeon Maheux, one of the Iconfactory's designers, said some Twitter clients don't handle "in reply to" data correctly and that's necessary for the feature to work on all conversations.
You can even compress text to try and save a few spaces by shortening words (like contractions) or deleting extra spaces. Pretty cool.
There’s also a lengthy list of advanced settings so you can bend Twitterrific to your every whim. For example, you can set a double tap and/or a triple tap to show the author, show the conversation, toggle favorite or mark the tweet.
The Comparison
There are way too many Twitter apps out there for me to fully compare Twitterrific in the space of this review. We'll do a full-blown comparison in the coming days, but for now I'll give you the abbreviated version. Twittelator Pro is the reigning feature powerhouse in the App Store and Twitterrific 2 gives it a run for its money. At least two features Twitterrific does not have and Twittelator Pro does is the ability to queue tweets to send later and a landscape keyboard. As far as price, Twitterrific Premium costs $3.99, less than half the cost of the original. The new price falls right in between Twittelator Pro ($4.99) and Tweetie ($2.99). There's no way this was an accident and I interpret the move as Iconfactory throwing down the Twitter gauntlet. And that's not considering the ad-supported version is fully featured, unlike Twittelator.Breakdown
The Good
Much like with the iPhone itself, feature lists alone don't quite capture the true value of the product. It's all about the user experience and, simply put, Twitterrific is an absolute pleasure to use. The design geniuses at the Iconfactory have packed all this power into an incredibly intuitive and fun interface. A little birdie sings when your new tweets arrive and a colorful little window comes up to tell you how many tweets there are. You can even choose whether you want the sound to be a Bluebird, Cardinal or a Robin.
While writing a tweet, you can click the eye icon and see all the tweets underneath. Click the keyboard and you're back writing your tweet. It's simple and it helps.
Little design touches like that are all over the place - like the send button. I wouldn't have noticed it if someone hadn't pointed it out on Twitter, but the send button is up at the top of the screen and away from the keyboard so users don't accidentally send a tweet before it's ready.
Even the credits screen is fun to look at because a little birdie shows up and streaks across the screen.
