Secretss

So most of you know that for some reason I’m extremely fussy about my Twitter apps. The apps that I’ve spent the most time on are Twittelator, Twitterrific, Tweetie2, Osfoora, TwitBird, and Tweetlist. I’ve used 36 Twitter clients so far (as reported by Twoolr), and I cannot say I’ve found the best app for myself. Maybe an app or two that I like to use, but the best in my opinion? Not yet. There’s always something lacking or requiring improvement.

However, this time I may have found a contender! Here’s a review of Tweetings. Please note that the images are cropped thumbnails; click on them to view them properly.

Timeline:

So this is the timeline. Tweets are aligned/color coded differently based on your own tweets, your mentions, and your followees’ tweets. When you tap on an avatar or swipe a tweet, a shortcut menu appears. Appearances are dependent on theme.

Nitpick: When using the bubble themes, the timeline scrolls all the way to the top after a refresh. The other themes work perfect though.

Retweets:
You have a choice of two retweet syntax: RT @user text here [or] text here /via @user. I always go for the former by default, but choices are always good. The newer, Twitter implemented retweet method (that doesn’t allow annotation on the tweet) is also supported.

Singular tweet view:

Images present in tweets are displayed as thumbnails below the tweet text in the tweet view, which is pretty neat. We are also able to tap-hold on links in tweets and have an option to load the link or copy it. This is a must have. What would be nice addition is to have an option to save the link to Instapaper or similar.

Problem #1: In my honest opinion, the singular tweet view looks awful. It’s too cluttered and clumped. I feel claustrophobic when I navigate to this view.

Problem #2: It would be nice to see the previous tweet together with the main tweet you’re viewing in the tweet view.

Problem #3: There is no way to copy the link of a status/tweet. It would be nice to be able to copy the status link and/or to tweet the status link.

Problem #4: Status links present in tweets are loaded in mobile Twitter in the built-in web browser.  Having them recognized as tweets and loaded in the in-app tweet view will put Tweetings above the other Twitter apps.

Viewing images:

Now this is an image viewer done right. It shows just the image itself, with no fussy webpages. The zooming is also adequate and better than Osfoora’s, which offers only two zoom levels. If you look at the bottom of the screens, you can see the tweet text shown there. What is cooler is that the bottom area is scrollable, so you can read the full tweet while looking at the images. When you tap once on the image, the header and footer goes away so you can view the image properly. Perfect for viewing iDevice screenshots, which I am confident are tweeted on a significant basis by people using iPhone Twitter apps.

Twitlonger and text expansion:

What can I say, you cannot be a proper Twitter app without Twitlonger and text expansion support. The tweet shown above contains a double expansion. And what is more, the expansion is retained app-wide after the first expansion, something which no other apps I’ve tried have implemented. Tweetings also supports Twitlonger tweeting.

Conversation threading and fullscreen mode:

This is something you can’t do without either. For those of you who haven’t noticed, the header and tab bar are gone here. Tweetings can toggle fullscreen mode in any view with a shake of your device (activate in Settings). DMs are also threaded, and as a bonus you can also choose to view them in the traditional “Inbox”/”Sent” style.

Compose view:

There is no lack of features here. Tweet preview is available when replying. Another awesome touch (or two) is that the drafts and list of scheduled tweets are accessible from within the compose view. Most other apps that support drafts have them in a different place under More, so you have to consciously make a choice to navigate to Drafts to tweet them. And yes, scheduled tweets. Can’t say anymore than that, it’s just really cool. Facebook integration and music tweeting also get plus points from me, and not to mention multiple attachments. I added two images and an audio clip in the tweet shown above (understandably, the audio clip has no thumbnail). You can tap on them to view them again, which is useful if you have a series of similar photos and you want to make sure you added the right ones and not duplicates. You can also remove them with the standard swipe and tap motion. The photos are uploaded to the host and the URLs returned to the tweet before the compose view is retracted and the tweet posted. I much prefer this method because in the case of Twitter failwhaling, the tweet containing the photo links will be saved as a draft. Employing the other method of tweeting with background uploading may end up with only the text saved as a draft and not the links, which means the photos get uploaded again when you tweet the draft.

Problem #5: The character count in Tweetings does not reflect the length of attachment urls. Most other apps will account for those urls and factor them in when calculating remaining characters.

Problem #6: It is troublesome when uploading multiple photo attachments as there is no option to select more than one at a time.

Profile view:

Tweetings supports three services as shown in the third image. There are tons of services revolving around the Twitter platform, like: who.unfollowed.me, followcost.com, klout.com, twittercounter.com, cursebird.com, tweetcloud.com, twoolr.com, autoff.com, twitter.grader.com etc.

Lists and who retweeted you:

The second feature is just epic. No other Twitter apps offer this information, except apps (like Birdbrain) that supplement (and not replace) your default Twitter app. I’m not talking about showing you which of your tweets have been retweeted, but on top of that also telling you who retweeted them. Normally, you can only get that information on Twitter’s Retweeted Of Mine page.

Choices:

Again, plenty of choices. I stick with j.mp now, but I’m still noting that u.nu is missing from the list. The themes are good too. Choices of image host, video host, and audio host include: TwitPic, Twitgoo, MobyPicture, yfrog, and Posterous. You also get a choice between Instapaper and Read It Later.

Nitpick: Saving a link to Instapaper doesn’t display a confirmation.

Boxcar integration:
This has been implemented. You can choose to make Boxcar launch Tweetings when you tap on the push notifications.

Parsing of carriage return:
Tweets with linebreaks are displayed “as is” with said linebreaks in the individual tweet view, which is what I’m looking for.

Problem #7: They are also displayed like that in the timeline, which is a no no.

Others:

Push notification is offered. Mentions are consolidated and only the most recent one is pushed to you with a note at the end about how many other mentions you have. Reading the notifications can initially be confusing if switching from Boxcar because Tweetings’ pushes are prefixed with your Twitter username, and since these are mentions that get pushed, your username is mentioned again as the third word of the notification. I’m not sure if it pushes retweets (the Twitter method) like Boxcar does. Under More, you can arrange the tabs that you want on the tab bar. Profile editing (including avatar uploading) is supported. One thing missing is a menu to select what gets refresh upon each automatic API call, like timeline, mentions, certain lists, and DMs.

My rating: 4 stars out of 5.