Brizzly: A Facebook and Twitter Machine

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

Being the super-cool guy that I am, I periodically get to try Web applications before the general public. And being the super-impatient guy that I am, I hate waiting when I don’t get to try them. But one app, which everyone’s been talking about recently, eluded my grasp until just a few days ago.

Brizzly’s a new Twitter and Facebook app, designed to help you manage your social networks from the Web in a way that just makes more sense. It’s only been released to the public a few days ago, and I’ve been playing with it non-stop since then. In only a couple of days, it’s become my default application for both social networks, actually taking Twitter and Facebook and doing both better than they do.

Brizzly connects to Twitter and Facebook through their own services, so you’re never giving your password to anyone who doesn’t already have it. Once your in, awesome features abound. You can easily do all the basics – updating status, reading what’s going on with friends, writing on friends’ walls, see pictures and profiles, and most of the other simple things you’d do either on Twitter or Facebook.

But the extras Brizzly gives you are what makes it rock. First, there’s the Twitter side of things: on the left side of the Brizzly page, you’ll see all the lists you’re subscribed to – your own, personalized reader of the people who interest you.

You can also save searches, view Direct Messages or Mentions by themselves, and see the current Trending Topics (along with explanations for what each popular term is). Brizzly even threads your Direct Messages into an IM-like look, making the conversation on Twitter much easier to follow.

You can read through tweets like you would news items – press J and K to move up and down a list, marking them read as you go. As you’re reading (and it auto-updates with new tweets), all URLs are un-shortened (longed?), so you’ll see where you’re actually being taken instead of just some goofy bit.ly URL. Pictures and videos are also displayed in-line, so you don’t need to go anywhere to see the media being shared on Twitter. If you want to reply or retweet, you can do so with one click. With one more click, you can add a picture or save the tweet as a draft.

And that’s just Twitter! Facebook is admittedly less awesome, but I’m just a fan of dealing with all my social stuff from one place. Brizzly lets you see your information and news feed, and lets you write on and see friends’ profiles as well. Brizzly’s search is awesome, spanning both Facebook and Twitter to find who or what you’re looking for. There’s also a neat “Recent Activity” bar that shows what you’ve been doing on Facebook recently – I don’t even think that exists on Facebook itself.

Anything Brizzly can’t do, it’ll take you to Twitter or Facebook to do it instead. But that situation, I found, was few and far between. Mostly, Brizzly’s a perfect combination of simple and powerful, adding features I desperately want from Twitter. It’s there anywhere with an Internet connection, is totally free, and probably just booted TweetDeck from its spot as my Twitter app.

What’s your Twitter app of choice? Why?

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