Which Twitter App?

TweetDeck is a feature-stuffed multi-column Twitter app for the iPhone. It is already a major desktop twitter client, running on Adobe AIR, with all the features anyone could ask for (including multiple accounts as of 0.26), so it seemed like they would spend all their time making a great user interface. They packed it all in there, but at the expense of usability. From their website:

TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more. TweetDeck shows you everything you want to see at once, so you can stay organised and up to date.

... and yeah, it does show you everything at once! The interface has so many little tabs and popouts that it loses the iPhone feel. It retains the column layout from the original AIR app for the desktop, but it just doesn't feel natural, and with all the data loaded the scrolling was a bit jerky.

Features

Like its big brother, this app has many features that are indispensible for die-hard Twitter users:

• Groups - pick any number of users you follow and put them in their own column. Examples: co-workers, celebrities
• Hashtags - search for the tags you want to find, or use the TwitScoop tag cloud included.
• Flexible - Search for anything you want, including @users, #hashtags, $StockTwits, and "specific phrases in quotes"
• Advanced Search - Add logical operators (AND, OR) to narrow your search. Examples: drupal OR d6, design AND freelance. Although you can further filter a column on the regular AIR app, for the iPhone version it appears you cannot.

There are things that would be nice to see--and have become standard features in many other iPhone Twitter apps--such as: user look ups, adding geo-location to tweets, viewing tweets based on GPS location, and saving trending topics as searches.

Multi-device Users

All versions of TweetDeck support multiple accounts, as well as account syncing. This means that with a unified login that you get from TweetDeck, all installs of their software can pull up saved user groups and saved searches. This is useful to people who like to maintain several columns of custom data on different computers and/or mobile devices. Set it up once and see it everywhere!