Finally, a Twitter Client That Works For Me

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

As a Twitter convert (after much internal battling), I’ve been in that irritating process recently of trying to find out which client or application to use to manage the Twittering I do with the Tweeps in my Twitterverse.

I’ve used a bunch of them; TweetDeck and Twhirl both even stuck with me for a while. I got rid of Twhirl because it was boring and slow, and TweetDeck now needs to go: I just looked at my computer’s power usage, and TweetDeck was using 1.3GB of RAM! Not okay.

So, I went on the hunt. It didn’t last long, though, because sitting in my RSS inbox, courtesy of Steve Rubel, was a look at the TwitterGadget for Gmail.

First off, TwitterGadget caught my eye because it’s designed for Gmail. No new applications, nothing to download and devote RAM to – it lives right in your Gmail window, and works in that same interface. Once I gave it a whirl, I was quickly hooked. TwitterGadget is enormously functional, incredibly easy to use, and perfect for my tweeting needs.

Once installed, TwitterGadget starts as a sidebar application on the left side of your Gmail page. There are tabs for “Home,” “Replies,” “Directs,” “Favorites,” and “Everyone.” You can switch easily between them, send tweets, and do all your Twittering from the sidebar.

The real fun, though, starts when you click the little double-arrow on the TwitterGadget. Over top of your Gmail Inbox comes a big version of the gadget, with much more reading space and an incredibly easy-to-use interface. Following and unfollowing, retweeting, viewing someone’s archive, replying and favoriting can all be done by clicking on someone’s profile picture, and reading and sending tweets is very easy and intuitive.

The TwitterGadget also has a number of great keyboard shortcuts to make tweeting and searching even easier – a feature sorely lacking in TweetDeck. URLs are automatically shortened, and the whole process of Twittering is streamlined.

If you’re not a Gmail user, TwitterGadget is also available in iGoogle. Its real value, in my opinion, is how fully-featured it is considering that it’s embedded within Gmail. I love having fewer applications to deal with, and as I’ve written before, Gmail’s gadgets are really what sold me on using it as my email client. It’s not the most fully-featured, and doesn’t help with groups or anything like that, but it’s not taking up a GB of RAM on my computer, either.

If you’re a Gmail user and a Tweep (Twerson? Who knows?), give TwitterGadget a shot – just follow the instructions to install it. You might just uninstall all your other Twitter apps.

What do you use for tweeting with your tweeple?

Photo: Shovelling Son

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