Which Twitter App?Reviews and Recommendations for Twitter Apps

Nambu is a feature-rich Twitter app for Mac OS X that supports many social networks. It offers plenty of configuration options but has simple defaults for beginners. It also has excellent integration with its sister services, tr.im and pic.im

Many Layout Options

Nambu has three options for displaying information, which make it great for beginners and advanced user alike.

• First is a familiar single-column setup, useful for people who just keep track of their friends' updates and the occasional @ mention or DM.
• The second is a layout similar to the iLife apps, like iPhoto and iTunes et al. This is a great way to organize many twitter streams, especially people who monitor multiple accounts and/or user groups. The left hand column keeps all of your streams in a compact list, with unread badges helping you notice when something needs your attention. This was the clear winner when trying out all three.
• The third layout is their multi-column view, and it may need a little finessing before it can be on par with TweetDeck or Seesmic. A native OS X multi-column app should run faster than an Adobe AIR app!

Staying Connected to Everything

Nambu lets you manage multiple accounts on multiple social networks. Support includes Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, identi.ca, and Ping.fm. Although Facebook purchased FriendFeed they have separate entry screens for Nambu 1.2.1. The Nambu network consists of some other properties, including tr.im and pic.im, so they have tight integration. You can manage your shortened URLs and uploaded images.

It looks like tr.im is being open sourced and donated to the community. No word on what that means for tr.im integration.

Search

The sidebar view offers the best search option in this twitter app, even over multi-column Nambu. It automatically saves your searches in the sidebar, but lets you delete them at any time. Within each search, Nambu pulls from four sources: Twitter, FriendFeed, OneRiot, and Yahoo!, but you can disable any one source if you don't wish to see its content. There is a filter bar allowing you to search within your search for specific keywords. There's no exclusion option but it's still very handy.

It was a little disappointing to see that Nambu only handles simple search. You cannot say things like "google OR bing" to see tweets about either one, it will only return results with all three of those words. Likewise, you cannot do location based searches like "burgers near:Dallas within:15mi". This one missing feature is a big blow to the strength of their multi-column view.

Final Verdict

Nambu gets 5/5 stars for delivering a twitter client that's easy to use while having plenty of features for power users. They integrate their other services brilliantly. Improving search would make this a killer app on the Mac!