There are literally dozens of desktop clients available for download… but which are the best?

To assist you in your Twittering efforts I’ve put together a list of 5 great desktop Twitter clients to help you Tweet from your desktop. If you know of a better one or don’t agree with one of my selections, leave a comment with a description and a link.

Are you currently using a Twitter desktop client? If so which app do you use? Tell us.

TweetDeck, my personal favorite, is like having a dedicated browser window just for social use. It makes going to Twitter.com almost obsolete.

TweetDeck allows you easily customize what you see in each column. Easily see Twitter updates, @ Replies, Direct Messages, Facebook status updates, Stocktwits, Twitscoop and more. A really neat feature is the ability to build groups of people you follow based on your certain parameters you set.

One of my biggest gripes with TweetDeck is how you have to go about re-arranging the columns. It should be a simple drag and drop but instead you have to use this nav at the bottom of each column. Sure it’s minor… but it is quite annoying at times.

Seesmic Desktop has been out for a few months. It was supposed to be the "answer" for TweetDeck, which took users away from Twhirl (another Seesmic desktop app).

At first glance Seesmic Desktop is a very clean looking app, a bit too "Mac" for my personal taste… but I’m sure most users love it.

Much like TweetDeck you can set columns with various information of your choosing. Probably the slickest feature Seesmic desktop features is a "drag and drop" image feature which uploads images to Twitpic for you.

For a full breakdown of all the features and a demonstration, check out the video below…

Twitterrific comes in two formats, a free (ad-supported) version or a premium version for $14.95. The two versions are essentially identical; the only differnece being that the free one has a small ad that is visible once an hour.

Some of the key features of Twitterrific include…

• Small desktop footprint
• Multiple Twiiter account support
• Number of unread tweets shown in the Dock
• Easily switch between friend and public tweets
• Keyboard shortcuts

One of the only "downfalls" is that Twitterrific is only available for the Mac. (If you consider this a downfall)

twhirl, the other desktop client by Seesmic, has been around for sometime and has a loyal fanbase.

Some of the key features for twhirl are…

• Connect to multiple Twitter and Friendfeed accounts
• Cross-post your updates to numerous social clients
• Easily find tweets mentioning our @username.

twhirl also offers extensive configuration options, some might even say too many options.

One of the drawbacks, and their reasoning for developing the multiple column client Seesmic desktop, is twhirl only features a single column layout.

DestroyTwitter is hoping to do what their name suggests, by keeping you far away from the Twitter homepage. The very compact Twitter app features several "canvases" (tabs) which update constantly.

One of the best things about DestroyTwitter is its minimal use of memory, compared to other AIR-based Twitter apps.

One of the better, if not the best, feature of DestroyTwitter is the "Rules" feature. With rules you can "exclude" certain users as well as certain keywords. Below is a snippet from DestroyTwitter about this feature…

"The Rules preferences are used for filtering the Home canvas. They allow the user to restrict the canvas to only showing particular users’ tweets. What makes it different though is ability to exclude users as well. Excluding users shows tweets from all users except the ones listed under "Exclude these users." There is also an option to show only tweets that contain links. Users are added to each list by either clicking the plus sign or pressing the hotkey Command + Shift + I/E (Mac) or Control + shift + I/E (PC) to prompt Quick Friend Lookup where I is include and E is exclude. Users can also be added in other canvases by pressing either I or E while a tweet is selected. This adds the user who posted the selected tweet. To remove a user from a list, hold Option (Mac) or Alt (PC) and click the username. Clicking the username without holding the modifier navigates to that user’s profile. Rules are applied the next time the Home canvas refreshes. Clicking "Apply rules" applies them immediately."

When you first look at DestroyTwitter it’s quite apparent that TweetDeck was the design inspiration, and why not mimic the best desktop client out there.

If you enjoyed this article, check out my article from last week, 5 Twitter tools to help you manage unfollowers. I’ll be posting a new "5 Twitter Tools" article  every Friday, so be sure to stay tuned to WebProNews.

I am probably behind the curve when it comes to picking up new-fangled technology, unlike Shawn Collins, Scott Jangro and Sam Harrelson.

On a recommendation from Kerri Morrison (AKA @kmore) , I checked out Twitterific.

Oh great…it’s Mac-only. I typically keep my MacBook on a pile of Cat5 ethernet cables under my desk most of the time and I don’t think I’ll be firing it up, so I can burn more time on twittering…

Twhirl looks like a better alternative – it’s Windows and Mac OS X and I see a number of people sending updates using it.

I’ll probably check this out.

Anyone have experience? What do you recommend?

I don’ think I’ll venture into Pownce territory till next week, as there’s quite a bit of site development on a couple of new verticals I’m working on.

Comments

What I like about the Seesmic’s acquisition of Twhirl isn’t that I’m using it as my default client for Twitter.   Or that I happen to use Seesmic and look forward to some chocolate and peanut butter goodness.

I thought last year was the year of offline apps.  And it was, of platforms.  The rise of AIM was a case in point, but it still needed a kller app.  It might still, and when Eugene Lee first mentioned Twhirl to me I didn’t take too much note of it beyond  richer clone of Twitterific.  Later adopted it and you learn about social tools by playing with them.

The thing is we will see more special purpose browser clients that leverage the opaque flows of APIs.  We’ve all expected it, but now we see them enriching the desktop.  Look at PicLens.  Just look and look and look how it augments, for now, the browser experience.  Expect that Tim Berners Lee expected an editor, not a browser.  And then with varying media and microcontent, the possibilities are even more diverse than what you expect now.

In the enterprise, of course, this has to get past the standard desktop model that is administered.  Individual choice will still thrive within he standard browser.  But experimentation of a richer, more persistent and connected web will happen.  As we reverberate between centralization and decentralization, with darlings like FriendFeed feeding upon a small ebb of fragmentation, the timing is right for things that bring our disparate activity together for us in new ways (not that Lifetreaming is new, its the pattern and time in which solutions are brought to bear for them).

The Seesmic thing makes sense on a number of levels beyond the trend line.  It starts with how a flash vdeo client plays well with AIM.  And the need to hook into the command line of an emerging web (and for twitter and others it becomes interesting if clients that subsume attention subsume more).  Just follow the attention and gestures that mean something (Steve Gilmore, where art thou?).

None of this is ready for mainstream (consumer, already made the other point).  But, I, for one, welcome our new atomized client underlords.  The underweb, today, fits those who do more than browse in their pajamas.  And if you think more than that — too much information.

Comments

 Loic Le Meur

Twhirl‘s price remains unknown, but on all other subjects, Le Meur has been extremely forthcoming.  Want to know why Seesmic purchased Twhirl, for example?  Le Meur lists a total of 20 reasons.  "[Twhirl creator] Marco Kaiser is super cool and it is all about people" catches the PR side; "[Twhirl] is the #1 and coolest Twitter client with more than 100,000 downloads and 7% of all tweets posted per day" should convince statisticians.

The addition of video to Twhirl will remain optional, so fans who fear change needn’t worry about that.  Also, in terms of what else is to come, we appear to be getting a preview thanks to a conversation on TechCrunch.  Le Meur has promised Gabe Rivera a button that will return users to the main timeline, and he should "eliminate delays by getting tweets via XMPP instead of polling," as well.

There are obviously some potential sticking points – Seesmic is still in alpha, and Twitter itself is notorious for suffering untimely outages.  Yet on the whole, the deal looks like it could give quite a boost to microblogging.