Looking for a better twitter/identi.ca client
I have two Twitter accounts, Skud for personal stuff (since March 2007), and fbase which I manage for work, as community director at Freebase.com. Each has around 700+ followers, and regularly gets direct messages and @replies. I actively follow a couple of hundred people as Skud; the fbase account follows a bunch of people but I only check it occasionally, via the website, so that can be ignored for now.
I also have a identi.ca account as skud. Many of my open source contacts primarily use identi.ca, and I would like to use it to keep in touch with them. I’ve also created a freebase account on identi.ca.
So, here are my requirements:
- I want to use a single client to manage all my tweeting and denting without having to login and out.
- My desktop environment is OSX. I would accept a desktop client, or a good web- or browser-based one. I’ll consider Linux-based clients running under Parallels, but it’s a bit of a PITA to set up.
- I want to be able to tweet/dent in one place and have it show up in both by default
- … but be able to direct it to just one location if appropriate, on a tweet-by-tweet basis.
- I want to minimise accidents where I accidentally tweet something personal on my work account (eek!)
- I want to follow people on both services (Twitter and identi.ca) in close-to-realtime, and be able to respond/join conversations/retweet in a timely fashion.
- I want notifications of @replies and direct messages on both services, for all my accounts.
- I also need to follow various searches in close-to-realtime, mostly to respond in a timely way to people talking about or asking questions about Freebase, but I also like to track mentions of my real name, conferences I’m attending, etc.
- I don’t absolutely need a highly graphical client, but I do appreciate the way seeing people’s user icons helps me remember who’s who.
- I don’t need anything special for mobile use; I have a twitter client on my phone that I’m sufficiently happy with.
Currently I’m using Tweetdeck, and it’s not too bad. Here’s my current setup (direct messages removed):
As you can see, it’s kind of out of control! It spreads across my desktop, and I need to scroll sideways to see everything, even with narrow columns. Plus, it doesn’t handle identi.ca, and it doesn’t give me very good cues to remember whether I’m tweeting as Skud or fbase, which means I’ve occasionally made embarrassing blunders.
With regard to UI, I suppose I would like something closer to an email client or feed reader, that allows me to set up folders/tags to manage all the stuff I’m following, and shows counts of new messages in each folder. The ability to collapse groups of stuff and see an aggregate count would be ideal; obviously I’d start by grouping “personal” and “Freebase”.
The other pretty good client I tried was an early version of Nambu, which had the UI I wanted but unfortunately doesn’t seem to want to let me login to identi.ca. Here’s a screenshot of my setup:
Downsides: the aforementioned failure to work with identi.ca, and I would prefer a little more flexibility in what I show in my sidebar. Like, I’d like to completely hide/ignore “Home” for the fbase account or at least automatically mark everything there as read.
I’m waiting on a beta code for the new version of Nambu and hoping it will work properly with identi.ca, but in the meantime, does anyone have suggestions of what else might work for me?
ETA: This is an advanced question I’m asking here. Yes I’ve looked in the obvious places. I’m looking for a specific recommendation for a fairly specialised set of requirements here, so unless you know the feature set of a client pretty well, chances are that just mentioning one with which you have only a passing acquaintance is unlikely to be helpful.
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I have no idea about OS X clients (or twitter clients really), but gwibber is a Linux-based client worth a look.
From what I’ve heard and the screenshots available and talking to friends who use it, it doesn’t have good support for multiple accounts.
http://choqok.gnufolks.org/about/
It’s KDE4 though
I’m currently writing a twitter client called Buzzbird using the Mozilla XUL framework, and I’m using OSX as the primary development platform. Identi.ca support is on the roadmap, but (sadly) it hasn’t gotten done yet as I haven’t had enough time to devote to it lately. I think someone has forked it in git and has added some preliminary identi.ca stuff.
http://getbuzzbird.com
If you know of anyone willing to pitch in, it’s open source! :)
.mike
How about SPAZ (http://getspaz.com/)?
@IOFlux: I tried it at one point and it didn’t work for me (can’t remember what the issue was now), but apart from that, I’m uncomfortable using something with that name.
I use gwibber to manage multiple accounts on multiple services (identica, facebook, twitter) and I have a default for which accounts messages go to that I can easily change on a tweet by tweet basis.
Stormy: in case I’m missing something… doesn’t Gwibber merge all incoming friends’ tweets into one stream? That’s kinda unmanageable for me, but if there’s an option I’m missing to separate them I’d love to hear it.
Gwibber does merge them all into one stream. You can color code them based on where they come from and you can open search tabs. But they are all in one stream. (I subscribe to the check in every once in a while, see what’s happening, read all replies and dms and ignore what you missed model.)
I probably need to split at least work/personal :-/
Gwibber 2.0.0 supports separate streams per account/service. Here’s a screenshot, you can see my twitter and identi.ca accounts in the left panel (though the main panel I show, is the ‘merged’ version.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mig5/4116395301/sizes/o/
I am, however, also looking for a browser-based option. Ideally Echofon/Twitterfox but supporting identi.ca