Twitter for iPhone: First Impressions and Reactions

Well, it happened. Loren Brichter’s @Tweetie 2 for iPhone is no more. Instead, Twitter has renamed the software ‘Twitter’, and the app is now available on the App Store for the mighty price of FREE.

I’ve spent a little time with the software over the last few hours, and can now give you my first full impressions.

Originally $2.99, Tweetie 2 for iPhone was the second update to Loren Brichter’s now famous ‘Tweetie‘ Twitter client. Early last month, Twitter announced it had acquired the software and planned to rename it ‘Twitter for iPhone’, becoming the official mobile iPhone client for the micro-blogging service.

Yesterday, after Twitter itself nearly buckled under the amount of people tweeting about the app, Twitter for iPhone made its debut onto the App Store, to huge welcome.

The first thing you’ll probably notice about version 3.0 is its icon — and can I just take a minute to say Twitter? What the hell. At least Loren’s original icon matched the overall feel of Tweetie’s user interface. Who made the decision to change it? Granted I realise you had to change it to signify to existing users that the app is now under new ownership, but really? A blue icon with a white bird? Surely you could have at least gone to some effort guys. Hey, you could’ve hired me.

Apart from the god-awful icon though, this update brings much more than just a re-branding from ‘Tweetie’ to ‘Twitter’. Opening the app for the first time you’ll probably notice just why this app is now owned by Twitter. The screen displays sign-up and login information towards the top, and whats trending, Twitter’s suggested user list, as well as sponsored tweets. While these are not ads per-se, and they’re pretty unobtrusive, they’re still there, eating valuable screen space. To coincide with Twitter’s new ‘Top tweets’ feature, each Twitter search you perform via the various search boxes scattered throughout the app, will now include top tweets. These are tweets which have been re-tweeted the most in any one search or hashtag category.

Perhaps the big news for this update though, is the app can now be used (albeit limited) without the user having to login. Users can now search, browse and view trends and top wteets without having to sign-in – pretty cool if you just need to check up on the latest from Twitter. Next up, as we originally noted in our live update yesterday, Twitter has moved the most used user-centric features of Twitter such as re-tweets via the official API into the main ‘swipe/flick’ bar available when swiping left to right on a tweet from your timeline. While this move is good, it has a dark side. You can no longer re-tweet some using the ‘/via’ method, meaning you can no longer add your own comments into anything you re-tweet. Lame, Twitter. Just lame.

Another big change to the software since version 3.0 is the use of the Twitter.com style of notification when something is re-tweeted. In Tweetie 2, you could re-tweet something, others could re-tweet you, and couldn’t clearly see who had re-tweeted you in your timeline, with that persons avatar slightly overlaying yours. In this update however, Twitter has moved these re-tweet notifications to the same style as on Twitter.com. meaning now, instead of the visual avatar overlay notification, you get this little gray text next to the re-tweet symbol, underneath each tweet in your timeline that has been re-tweeted. Another annoyance is the lack of being able to see how many people have re-tweeted one of your tweets. While the app allows you to navigate to ‘My tweets retweeted’ under Profile > Re-tweets, the app doesn’t yet allow for you to see just how many times each tweet has been re-tweeted and by who.

Overall I have to say that some of the functionality brought in this update is well needed. That said, I hate the icon, the way re-tweets are handled and can’t say I digg the appearance of either the suggested user list or sponsored tweets.

For me, these are things which should be left for Twitter.com, where there is SPACE, rather than trying to cram every single detail on Twitter into a mobile app on the iPhone. On top of all that, after waiting impatiently for the update to the client, people found it doesn’t yet support the iPad natively. Big bummer.

Will I be using Twitter for iPhone? Maybe. But know this, if you see ‘Twitter for iPhone’ in my stream, it may not necessarily be because I’m using Twitter for iPhone. Yep, strangely, as well as the mobile client identifying itself as ‘Twitter for iPhone’, so does Tweetie for Mac. Not sure exactly what’s going on there Twitter, but yeah.