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February 15, 2012

Review: Tweetbot for the iPad

By David Vaughan, Director of Projects, TSG Global



I’ve tried what seems to be endless Twitter clients for the iPad, Mac and iPhone (News - Alert). I would always wind up back on Twitter's own app or Web interface because I just couldn't get quite use to everything else. When I discovered Tweetbot for the iPhone, I felt I had truly found what I had been looking for.  So I also grabbed it for the iPad but just couldn't get used to it on that device, which led me back to TweetCaster. 



 

Now, don't' get me wrong, I love TweetCaster for the iPad as well, but there was just more functionality in Tweetbot that made me yearn for an actual iPad version.  Two weeks ago, the fine folks at Tapbots released my wish into the wild.

Tweetbot Twitter (News - Alert) client for the iPad offers everything I had in the iPhone app, and it also provides some nice additions for the iPad.

 

Tweetbot for the iPad kept all the grand features the iPhone client has:

  • Retweeting with comment
  • Swiping to see either the conversation or the replies of tweets
  • A nice translation of tweets
  • Allowing you to pick the service to share- video or pictures
  • and many more

 

But with all this extra screen real estate on the iPad, Tweetbot now has an awesome layout which it has demonstrated very well.  The extra real estate is used wonderfully with a sidebar of options to let you easily navigate.  In landscape mode or portrait mode it doesn't matter because the sidebar is still there. Buttons allow users to view their timeline, mentions, direct messages, favorites, search, profile, lists, retweets and a mute list. That last option lets you mute specific users, specific Twitter clients, or specific hashtags for a day, a week, a month or forever.

Using the new app proved worthwhile and extremely easy, and within a matter of a couple hours everything just seemed like second nature as far as functionality goes; just like I had been using the app since the first day I had an iPad. 

And I did say there were extras to sweeten the deal. So where are the extras?

Finger gestures to make you want to never leave.  Start with a two-finger swipe from right to left which will move you back one level, then if you tap from a tweet you go deeper into the conversation and then you can go even deeper into another user’s profile.  Want to go back? No problem, a swipe of two fingers puts you back into the conversation. Want all the way back to your timeline? A sweet three finger swipe takes you all the way back to the point of origin.

No Bazinga here. All these swipes of ease make this app just like my right hand, in which I cannot do without anymore.  But wait, there is one more little extra. When I downloaded the app and launched it for the first time, it automatically asked to pull in the Twitter accounts I had already set up in iOS5.

 

The only thing I still wish Tweetbot had that I love in TweetCaster is the ability to post a tweet to multiple accounts at the same time.  Tweetbot, includes this little option and now I truly will never have a reason to leave again.

Follow me on Twitter.

You can get Tweetbot for iPad for $2.99 from the App store.


David Vaughan is an industry veteran of telecom, now Director of Projects at TSG Global, Inc. To read more of David's articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Stefanie Mosca
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