Review: Seesmic Web, web based Twitter client

While I per­son­ally pre­fer to use a desk­top client to access my Twit­ter account, I do some­times find myself uti­liz­ing Twitter’s web­site to post Tweets to my time­line.  I am not the biggest fan of Twitter’s web inter­face, as it is lim­ited in func­tion­al­ity com­pared to desk­top clients such as Seesmic, Twhirl, and Tweet­Deck.  For­tu­nately, there is alternative.

Seesmic Web is what Twitter’s web inter­face should have been all along.  Your time­line updates with­out the need to refresh the page, and the inter­face is as classy and pro­fes­sional as the Seesmic desk­top Twit­ter client.  Closely resem­bling the Seesmic desk­top Twit­ter client, Seesmic Web offers both a sin­gle and multi-column view.  The sin­gle col­umn view allows you to view replies, sent mes­sages & Tweets, and favorites in one time­line, or view only replies, only sent, or only favorites by select­ing the cat­e­gory from the side­bar.  While using the multi-column view, you can open a col­umn for replies, sent mes­sages & Tweets, favorites, and saved searches.

There are two dis­play modes for each col­umn as well.  You can choose to the tra­di­tional dis­play, or a list of col­lapsed Tweets which can be expanded to view the whole mes­sage as well as the user’s pic­ture.  The col­lapsed list gives you a longer view at your time­line, while the tra­di­tional view allows you the famil­iar Twit­ter expe­ri­ence.  You can chose your pre­ferred method of dis­play for each indi­vid­ual col­umn.  The sin­gle col­umn mode uses the col­lapsed list view, and cur­rently can­not be changed to the tra­di­tional expanded view.

Direct Mes­sages are han­dled a bit dif­fer­ently than in Seesmic’s desk­top Twit­ter client.  There are two but­tons near the top left cor­ner of Seesmic Web, “Home” and “Mes­sages”.  Click­ing “Mes­sages” will bring you to your Direct Mes­sages with a col­umn to the left dis­play­ing a chrono­log­i­cal list of your Direct Mes­sage con­ver­sa­tions, show­ing who con­tacted who last and how long ago.

Click­ing a con­ver­sa­tion in the list will open a col­umn con­tain­ing the mes­sages sent to and from the other party in a way which resem­bles an instant mes­sag­ing ser­vice.  At the head of the conversation’s col­umn, you will find a textbox to for adding a mes­sage to the con­ver­sa­tion, as well as URL short­en­ing.  This fea­ture takes Direct Mes­sages and changes them into a much more usable and dynamic mes­sag­ing ser­vice.  You can open mul­ti­ple Direct Mes­sage columns as well.  I would absolutely love to see the Seesmic desk­top client han­dle Direct Mes­sages this way.

One of my favorite fea­tures in Seesmic is the abil­ity to pre­view cer­tain links with­out need­ing to open another browser win­dow or browser tab.  In-line pre­view pic­tures via twit­pic, yfrog and mobyp­ic­ture or pre­view YouTube videos or Google maps from bit.ly short­ened links.

One fea­ture miss­ing from Seesmic Web which you will find in Seesmic’s desk­top client, is user groups.  Adding this fea­ture would take an already amaz­ing web based Twit­ter client, and put it over the top.  While I pri­mar­ily use Seesmic’s desk­top client, I am def­i­nitely learn­ing to appre­ci­ate Seesmic Web with each use.  If there is a bet­ter way to inter­face with Twit­ter using a web browser, I have yet to find it.  I look for­ward to see­ing what the future holds for this promis­ing application.

Seesmic does offer a mobile client as well, though I will not be review­ing it since I do not own an iPhone.  If they develop an appli­ca­tion for the Android OS, I will be happy to install it on my G1. (hint hint)

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