How to use Twitter on your iPhone

screen shot of itweet, black background with high contrast colours for names and hyperlinks

And the winner is… itweet

Today I asked my Twitter friends to recommend the best way to access Twitter on my new iPhone. The response was immediate and extremely helpful. Thanks to everyone for their feedback.

I’ve listed below each recommendation along with the people who rated them.

http://pockettweets.com - @mbites
http://hahlo.com - @laurenceveale @davidjrice @builtbydave
http://m.twitter.com @eoghanmccabe @christinelu
http://itweet.net @PaulMiller

To try these out, visit each Web site on your iPhone as you would with Twitter.com on your desktop. There’s no application to download.

My thoughts with my rating from 1 to 4

  1. itweet is the site I’m going to use. It’s by far the easiest on the eye. User names and hyperlinks are easily identifiable with the use of high contrast colours.
  2. PocketTweets was a close runner up. If first impression was to be my last, this would have been the winner with its slick UI. However, after 3 attempts to get a feel for each one, I felt the itweet was more pleasing on the eye and much easier to read.
  3. halo does what it says on the tin. It’s simple to use, but pretty boring.
  4. m.twitter is Twitter’s ‘mobile’ version. Don’t bother. It’s complete crap, boring and doesn’t even fit on the screen properly. Guys, what were you thinking?

Which one do you prefer? If you’ve already recommended a Twitter site, have you since changed your mind after seeing alternatives?


Comments  Join the discussion


  1. flag
    4Avatars v0.3.1 v0.3.1  warzabidul said...

    I’ve been using it for a while and I was very happy with it but recently it’s been buggy. Not sure why. Using it on the touch rather than the iphone though.


  2. flag
    Paul Walsh  Paul Walsh said...

    @warzabidul - I’m assuming you use itweet? What kind of problems have you had? I’ll keep an eye out for them.


  3. flag
    4Avatars v0.3.1 v0.3.1  ribot said...

    Loving the PocketTweets interface. For me, itweet actually looks a little crude and ugly (it could be so much better with a bit of polish). That said, I’ll still be using the trusty m.twitter.com (and even the regular http://www.twitter.com) as this is the only version that allows the user to see more than the last 20 tweets (a feature which isn’t currently possible on third-party sites due to restrictions with the API - they say that paging will soon be made available). Thanks for bringing the other options to our attention.

    ribot


  4. flag
    4Avatars v0.3.1 v0.3.1  ribot said...

    also, I’ve just discovered another client: http://twitter.thincloud.com - basic functionality (no favs or active URL links), but simple and has a more twitter-esque look and feel to it.

    Note to dev/usability team: on the browse friends page on twitter.thincloud.com don’t link to people’s external urls, link to their twitter streams!


  5. flag
    4Avatars v0.3.1 v0.3.1  iPhone » Blog Archive » How to use Twitter on your iPhone said...

    [...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]


  6. flag
    4Avatars v0.3.1 v0.3.1  warzabidul said...

    Just doesn’t refresh the friends timeline or replies on occasion… Worked fine for weeks though. Just recent problems.


  7. flag
    4Avatars v0.3.1 v0.3.1  scruffythecat said...

    You are right, itweet is a cut above the rest. I did not know about it. I love the @ feature!
    Thanks


  8. flag
    4Avatars v0.3.1 v0.3.1  MIke Coulter said...

    Paul, thanks for the review.

    I tried itweet, but couldn’t find a way to read older posts, (as in m.twitter) I actually like m.twitter because it is in a sense, ‘neutral’, I find itweet a bit too contrasty/designery’in it’s blue/black/white/red combo.


  9. flag
    4Avatars v0.3.1 v0.3.1  Fred Grain said...

    Nice site Paul what software did you use?


  10. flag
    4Avatars v0.3.1 v0.3.1  warzabidul said...

    http://twitter.thincloud.com/ Doesn’t have a bad user interface either and it allows you to go back into your tweet archive.


  11. flag
    Paul Walsh  Paul Walsh said...

    @ribot I’ve noticed it too.

    @everyone - itweet and all other 3rd party sites are unable to display more than 20 messages. You can’t scroll beyond the screen that you land on to see what past conversations have taken place. This is a restriction on the Twitter API.

    However, I dislike Twitter’s rubbish mobile site so much that I’d rather continue with itweet and then update myself on past conversations when I’m at a desktop computer.

    @Fred, thanks - we used Wordpress.


  12. flag
    4Avatars v0.3.1 v0.3.1  KevanB said...

    Thanks for the posting…   I tried all the options you talk about and for me I think I’ll be like you and use iTweet.

    For me one of the major killers of the others was the lack of clickable links. What’s the use?    For now, iTweet will serve my needs but I’m sure someone is already out there hacking together an even better Twitter option for the iPhone!


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