A few nights ago I took a few minutes to download the official Twitter for Blackberry client and my initial thought was; “Wow! This is nice!” I immediately found appreciation in the; super fast connectivity, direct message integration and the beautiful user interface. To simply put it, the official client is slick… real slick.
While these 3 benefits are nice, I must say that the official Twitter Blackberry app is missing a few things. First let me clarify something. For the average user the official app is great but as a power user I decided I need a bit more. I put together a quick list of reasons why I’ll still use Uber Twitter.
1. Classic Retweet – Twitter’s explanation about how and why the chose to build the official retweet function makes complete sense to me but it’s not flexible enough. I prefer having the ability to create some commentary surrounding the message as a way to express myself and classic retweeting gives me that option. What would be great is a way to mention a particular message so that users can continue to include commentary around the original tweet.
2. The Uber Bar – This is a GREAT feature from Uber Twitter and I’ve come to appreciate its utility. Essentially the Uber Bar is a universal book-marking system that allows you to quickly access users from an auto-expanding navigation bar at the top of the application. This is great for quickly accessing your friend or favorite brand’s tweets.
3. Multiple Accounts – This is pretty self-explanatory. Uber Twitter supports quick access to multiple accounts while the official Twitter application doesn’t. The lack of support isn’t a big deal to most users but for brand managers it’s a drag. I guess the one upside is that you can’t accidentally send brand tweets from your personal account or even worst sending personal tweets to your brand followers… Yikes!
4. Font Options – Though the official client gives you the ability to change the font size and family, I personally would like more options. UberTwitter gives you the ability to edit the font size and family for consumption and creation. I prefer a slightly larger font when I’m creating a tweet, while enjoying the extra real estate when reading tweets.
5. Photo Sharing Options – Uber Twitter gives users a few options for photo sharing while Twitter only integrates TwitPic. Though it gets the job done I have an account with TweetPhoto so the integration Uber Twitter has works really well!
That’s about it. I hope that this is helpful but I’d love to hear what you think. What Twitter application do you use on your Blackberry and why?