Twittelator Pro for iPhone Packs in Lists and Every Other Feature
By: Hillel Fuld
When it comes to Twitter apps for the iPhone, if you want to succeed, you need to have a significant edge over the competition. There are so many apps available to tweet from your iPhone, that creating just another one wont cut it. As for Twitter itself, the company has not rested much lately with new features announced almost daily. To just name a few, Twitter released their new Twitter Lists feature, the new RT mechanism, the tweet counter on top of Twitter.com, and the auto refresh functionality that was missing for so long.
Most of the new Twitter features are for the Web interface only since all 3rd party apps have a RT button as well as Auto Refresh. The one new feature that was important for the development world was the new Lists feature released a few weeks back. The big question was who was going to be the first company to release a Twitter client that includes lists? Well, Seesmic did it with a Web based and Windows client that both generated a lot of buzz, and now the first iPhone app to include the new lists is Twittelator Pro.
This is the edge I was talking about before, and it is exactly this advantage of being first on the scene that is going to transform Twittelator Pro into a serious contender for the best Twitter apps out there such as Tweetie 2 and Echofon. Now, before I delve into the details ofTwittelator Pro and its almost endless feature set, let me just say I have not used Tweetie 2, and I am a hardcore Echofon Pro fan. I have been using Echofon since it was Twitterfon, and I have grown accustomed to its interface, which makes it difficult for me to learn new apps.
When I first opened Twittelator Pro, I was of course excited to use my lists that I spent so much time creating. My first impression was that the interface was nice looking and simple enough. When trying to access my lists, I felt they were hidden too deep in the interface. In my opinion, and again, this is just based on my personal taste, you are more than welcome to disagree in the comments, the lists should be available on the main screen somehow, since many people will be using their lists to follow tweets as opposed to the All Friends column. The fact of the matter is lists are here to solve the problem that following so many people is close to impossible, so you now have the ability to follow people based on your own categorization. I know this would have been a huge step, but perhaps the developers of Twittelator Pro might consider allowing users to replace the All Friends column with a list.
Enough about lists, Twittelator Pro is absolutely jam packed with features, and is by far the most advanced Twitter app I have used on any platform including iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows, Mac, and Web. It has everything you could possibly think of. However, I will say that this is the perfect example for a form vs function debate since like I said, it is full of functionality, but its user experience is lacking compared to other apps I have used.
So what are all these features I keep talking about? Twittelator Pro is a perfect example of how Twitter, a simple microblogging service that lets you write 140 characters can become SO much more with their advanced API. The developers claim the app has over 200 features, and if I did not try out Twittelator Pro, I would find that hard to believe, but now, after using it, the only think I am asking is “Only 200?”
So where do I start? The basic UI is similar to other iPhone apps with five tabs across the bottom. The tabs are Friends, Mentions, Messages, Settings, and More. Pretty basic, but that is where the simplicity ends. Just an example of how complex this app is, when viewing your friends, and you click on the person’s avatar, you are presented with an advanced menu including seeing their tweets, their mentions, their friends, their followers, their lists, blocking, muting, or reporting them as spam, as well as enabling notifications for their tweets.You can also view what services they use as well as their favorites. All that from clicking on their avatar.
When you click on their name on the other hand, a totally different menu appears. The options on this menu include reply, RT, DM, copy tweet, email tweet, favorite tweet, copy link, and others. In addition to their avatar and their name, you can click on the time of the tweet and that automatically replies to the person. Pretty insane amount of features all from a simple tweet. However, the first thing I noticed is that clicking on the whole area of the actual tweet does nothing, that is where my finger went first in order to reply and nada. If you press it for a few seconds, only then do you get a fourth menu which includes save options and reply options. So from what I can tell, there are approximately four ways to reply to a tweet, but not the one I would expect most, simply pressing the tweet itself.
Moving along, as you can tell, there is a lot to talk about with Twittelator Pro, that was only the first tab. The replies and DMs columns are pretty much the same concept in terms of replying and you can view threads with replies and DMs, which is very useful and missing from some other clients. I did NOT see a reply all button anywhere, so if you want to add a few people to a tweet, looks like you will have to do it manually.
The Settings tab has got to be the longest list of settings I have ever seen in an app. I cannot discuss all the options there, so I will give you a list, but trust me, this is gonna be long enough. The customization of Twittelator Pro is endless. So the settings tab includes Help, how many tweets to load in the timeline as well as search, the color theme, the way your tweets are displayed including fonts, screen name, and order. There are also settings for opening links, writing correction, tweet confirmation, refresh rate, landscape mode, and I am not even half way down the page yet.
Settings also include complete customization of RTs from whether they are editable or automatic, to the format of the actual RT. You have the ability to choose which link shortening service, picture hosting site, video and audio service to use, how pictures are uploaded in terms of resolution, GPS and location settings, sound options, and much much more. I do not want to bore you and this list is getting too long but take my word for it, I could have gone on.
Then there is the More tab, which is just as long as the Settings tab. It includes your multiple accounts, search, your profile, your timeline, your RTs, your lists (yes, it is buried all the way in here), trends, your favorites, and other features I have never used, so I am not really sure what they are.
Some of the features buried in Twittelator Pro and are worthy of mentioning include taking/recording and tweeting high resolution pictures, audio and video, offline tweeting, creating lists, posting a map of your location, finding nearby tweets, a built in browser, and unprecedented search capabilities.
I dare you to come up with a service or feature that is NOT included in Twittelator Pro, it wont be easy. Somehow though, it does seem a little bit that between the long delays in refresh (and occasional freezing, which was explained to me by the developer), the lack of an obvious reply option, the missing reply all, that the developer focused primarily on adding and including as many features in Twittelator Pro as possible, and kinda neglected the user experience a little. Don’t get me wrong, the interface is not bad, I have seen bad interfaces and this is not one of them, but it is not amazing either.
At the end of the day, when I am interested in seeing if I had any replies, I am going to open Echofon, but when I want to really access Twitter on the go, and communicate with my friends and followers, the fact that Twittelator Pro has my lists available to me is going to make it the primary app I will be using from now on. However, since the list feature is still new, the other developers will be adding it soon, and from what I hear about Tweetie 2 and can confirm about Echofon, with their user experience and lists, they will become my first choice, but for now Twittelator Pro has them beat.
Our Rating: 4/5
Developer: Stone Design
