Top 2 Twitter iPhone Apps: Twitterific Premium vs Twittelator Pro

by Lynnette

apps, iPhone,

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twitterific-on-ipod-touch.jpg I have a couple of different Twitter accounts, each with an entirely different audience based on very unique interests:

@FunDogs – fun dog tips for people with dogs

@FunHouseHome – helpful information for homeowners – fun home & garden tips

@FunTimesGuide – where the geek in me hangs out and I interact with people on a wide variety of topics

People who are interested in my dog-related tweets aren’t necessarily interested in my geeky updates or my house & home tweets, so I needed a way to interact with each group separately.

When I’m at my computer, I use HootSuite to do that. When I’m on the go, I need an iPhone app for Twitter that goes with me. (I’m never without my iPhone.)

I had heard great things about both Twitterific Premium (also known as Twitterific 2.0) and Twittelator Pro (the version I downloaded was 2.2). So I purchased them both through the Apple Store and started comparing the apps for myself, side-by-side.

See which one is my favorite…

 

My Review

First, I will highlight the pro’s and con’s of each program separately.

Then, at the end, you can see which one I ultimately chose.

 

Twittelator Pro ($4.99) Twittelator-Pro.png

What I like…

  • It’s obvious when there are conversation THREADS available to view (with a balloon around the posted date in the tweet itself), so you don’t have to click away only to find out there are no discussions for this tweet.
  • You can keep downloading MORE and more and more tweets (there’s no limit that I can tell).
  • When using the main SEARCH feature (under “more”) to look up a twitter username, you get a combined view of the person’s latest tweets and their latest @replies. Plus, you can keep clicking “more” to view even more.
  • You can view all @REPLIES to a person from their profile screen in Twittelator Pro.
  • You can BOOKMARK peoples’ profiles in Twittelator Pro. Then, you can view your bookmarked peoples’ tweets in a separate twitter stream (from the main reports screen). It’s similar to creating a group; it’s yet another way to view your favorite peoples’ tweets on the fly at any time.
  • You can VIEW PHOTOS inline – thumbnails that you can click on to view larger (it’s quick too!)
  • You can SWITCH from one Twitter account to another while you’re in the middle of composing a message.
  • You can COPY a tweet & PASTE it into a new tweet. At first I wondered why — why not just RT, then edit as necessary? But, if you have multiple accounts, this allows you to copy a tweet into a different account to share with that audience!
  • There is an amazing help file for Twittelator Pro. Which is great, because there’s no way to remember how to do everything that this nifty program can do.


What I don’t like…

  • It’s a little CUMBERSOME to learn all of Twittelator Pro’s many capabilities. It took me 2 hours to practice and get familiar with the features I’d be using most.
  • SUBGROUPS only work well with very small groups because they load so slowly.
  • VIBRATE should be an option (rather than just sound) to notify when tweets have loaded.
  • PROFILE button takes a long time to “switch over” when you have multiple accounts and you want to view the profile that goes with each account. (Thus, viewing “favorites” often gets hung up, since they’re viewed from the Profile screen – that takes awhile to switch over to the account you’re actually viewing.) I’ve had to close Twittelator Pro altogether, then open it again to see the profile associated with that account.
  • When you look up a @username, Twittelator Pro always assumes you’re already FOLLOWING them, so your options are “stop following” and “dm” and “reply”. You have to click “stop following” in order to be able to “start following” them. And then you get an error message that you can’t stop following this person because you were never following them to begin with. Ugh.
  • It would be nice to know if someone is following you or not before you start to DM someone — you can’t tell if they’re following you until after you’ve started typing your message and an error message pops up.
  • You can’t BLOCK a follower, you can only unfollow.
  • It would also be nice to SEE IF PEOPLE ARE FOLLOWING YOU before you decide to follow or unfollow them as well.
  • SEARCHING for a profile doesn’t work for me (from MY PROFILE page) – it gets hung up on “loading misc”… whatever that means.
  • In general, it seems like there are more CLICKS required to get to things (even things you use most frequently), and it’s not easy to remember how to get to things.

These things didn’t affect my decision, but they’re worth mentioning…

  • Twittelator Pro shows where the person POSTED their tweet from.
  • The profile screen which shows a @username’s Twitter STATS has these unique details: ability to view this person’s followers, view this person’s friends, and view this person’s @mentions.
  • Initially, I really liked that Twittelator Pro allowed you to SAVE WEB PAGES to Read It Later (a program I’ve been using for awhile which syncs with my desktop & laptop). But Twittelator Pro also allows you to save web pages to Instapaper, so I tried Instapaper just to see what the differences were. Instapaper is quicker to log-in & sync across computers. But I miss ReadItLater’s icon in the address bar which shows if you’ve already saved an article to read later or not. I’m happy to give Instapaper a go for awhile. It seems good.
  • There are lots of ways to put followers into GROUPS (you can bookmark, or make subgroups), but I always forget how to do it on the fly in Twittelator Pro. So this is a feature that needs to grow on me.
  • To get to LINKS mentioned within a tweet (including @usernames and #hashtags, you click the paperclip then choose which link you wish to view (if there were several mentioned).
  • There are lots of pre-loaded SEARCHES/reports available, but most I’ll never use. Of course, you can also save your own.
  • From a @username’s profile screen, you can view that person’s @replies (or MENTIONS) – I don’t do this much, but I’m glad it’s viewable from the profile screen.
  • While you get to see a good number of FRIENDS & FOLLOWERS at a time on one page (from your profile page or a @username’s profile page), these lists are slow-loading and you still have to keep clicking “more” to view more.
  • You have to CONFIRM that you want to send each tweet (because you also get the option to save a draft of that tweet instead — which is a nice feature).
  • While you can save DRAFT tweets, you can’t SCHEDULE tweets — which would really be an awesome feature!

View screenshots of Twittelator Pro.

 

 

Twitterific Premium ($3.99) twitterific-icon.png

What I like…

  • I was UP AND RUNNING in no time. It only took me 30 minutes to figure everything out and to have all of my Twitter accounts up to date.
  • The PROFILE screen is “smart” — it knows if you’ve already followed someone or if they’re following you. Plus, you can unfollow or block from the person’s profile screen.
  • From a person’s profile page, you can write NOTES to save private details about that person — how you met them, etc. Similar to biz card! These are for your eyes only.
  • It seems must FASTER (than Twittelator Pro).
  • I like that VIBRATE is an option (rather than sound) to notify you when new tweets have loaded.
  • Tweets you’ve FAVORITED show a bright gold star on the main tweet itself (great to see at a glance).
  • I like that you can CUSTOMIZE Twitterific Premium in the following way: you can set the actions which occur whenever you double-click a tweet, or triple-click. (I chose double-click: mark as favorite; triple-click: show conversation thread for that tweet).
  • When you’re typing a new message (or replying or retweeting), you can click the COMPRESS TEXT button and it will try to shorten the message for you using common abbreviations.

 

What I don’t like…

  • Twitterific Premium only loads 200 tweets at a time MAXIMUM! And there is no option to see “more” once you’ve read those 200 tweets.
  • While the Profile screen accurately reflects whether you are FOLLOWING someone or not, this is not the case on the Direct Message screen. Twitterific Premium doesn’t know until after you hit “send” whether the person you are DM’ing is actually following you or not. If they’re not, then your message reverts to a @reply instead of a DM.
  • For some reason, each person’s @MENTIONS are only accessible from one of their tweets themselves, rather than from the person’s profile screen. That doesn’t make any sense!
  • Every time you BOOKMARK a link, it jumps out of Twitterific Premium and goes to Safari. I don’t like to leave the Twitter stream because then you have to re-open Twitterific Premium and remember where you were. The same is true whenever you “email” a link as well.
  • I couldn’t find any type of manual or online help showing EVERYTHING this app can do and how to tweak all the settings & features. That seems odd & short-sighted.
  • Before you start reading, favoriting tweets, etc… you have to wait for all of the new tweets to LOAD each time you open Twitterific Premium.
  • Twitterific Premium seems to be a BATTERY HOG.

 

These things didn’t affect my decision, but they’re worth mentioning…

  • The profile screen which shows an individual’s personal twitter STATS has these unique details: when they last updated and when they joined twitter.
  • Twitterific Premium doesn’t show where the person posted their tweet FROM – not that it really matters.
  • Since “MARKING” a tweet (a unique feature in Twitterific Premium) doesn’t save it anywhere but on your iPhone, it’s rather useless to me. It would be better if it synced with your desktop computer or your main Twitter account. (Perhaps if you use the Twitterific desktop app, you would have full benefits of the “marking” feature?) Instead, I would just use Favorites for this same purpose that marking tweets provides.
  • When you’re composing a message, if you click on PEEP, you get a split-screen 1/2 is your compose message and 1/2 is the Twitter stream you were reading before you clicked on “compose”. From there, you can scroll until you find a @username you want to include in your message, or a link that you’d like to insert in your message. To do so, simply click on it in your Twitter stream and it immediately appears in the message you’re composing. (I just don’t see myself using this much.)
  • Initially, I didn’t like that Twitterific Premium only SAVED WEB PAGES to Instapaper, rather than ReadItLater which was my favorite program for identifying web pages I wanted to read later. But Instapaper quickly grew on me. That said, if you’ve used a password to protect your “read later” web pages in Instapaper, it won’t work on the iPhone. Instapaper will only save if you remove the password from your Instapaper account — which doesn’t make much sense. I don’t save anything sensitive to “read later”, so I don’t really care. But it’s not a very smart way to do business.

View screenshots of Twitterific.

 

 

Pros & Cons That Apply To Both Programs

  • I wish links (including @profilenames and #hashtags) were a different color than the same text color as the rest of the tweet. (Nambu really does that part right!)
  • love the fact that Internet pages open up WITHIN the program itself, rather than opening up in an external browser, as with some iPhone apps.
  • Replies, mentions, retweets, and direct messages show up INLINE – which is a huge bonus.
  • When another @username appears in a tweet, you can click to view that person’s entire profile — whether you’re following them or not.
  • You can email links (web pages), rather than simply favoriting them or retweeting them. I use this feature a lot to share links with people without having to make it public by re-tweeting.
  • Font size, style, and background colors are very easy to read in both programs. Twitterific Premium’s INTERFACE is only slightly softer & friendlier – very easy on the eyes.


So, Which Program Is My Favorite?

I purposely tried to use both programs equally — knowing that I would eventually gravitate to whichever was easier or whichever had the most features that I actually use on a regular basis.

As it turns out, my favorite app for managing multiple Twitter accounts on the iPhone at this time is: Twitterific Premium.

Twitterific Premium is generally more intuitive and slighly easier to use. Twittelator Pro has many more features, but most of them I don’t need (yet). Perhaps it’s only a matter of time until I discover reasons to use all of the other fun features that Twittelator Pro provides.

Since I’ve purchased them both, I’ll be sure to update them both regularly as new updates become available. Who knows, I may switch back and forth over time. We’ll see…

 

UPDATE: A couple weeks after using Twitterific Premium religiously, I switched to Twittelator Pro —  and I’ve never looked back! The simplicity of the repetitive tasks (favoriting tweets, saving articles to read later, re-tweeting, looking up individual’s tweet streams/followers/following) is what has made me stick with Twittelator Pro for 3 months at this point. Can’t see myself going back to Twitterific Premium, but I still can’t bring myself to delete the app from my iPhone.

 

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