I’ve been a fan of the Twitter app for Mac since I started using Twitter several years ago, so I was sad to see it discontinued. What I liked about it was that it was very streamlined, yet gave me the information I wanted. I’ve gotten used to seeing my notifications for all my Twitter accounts, and knowing what had been liked or retweeted. I was also used to managing these accounts in a single small window, which worked well on my laptop with minimal screen real estate. I also liked that the app was free. So as you might guess, I haven’t found a good alternative yet.
Tweetdeck is the most logical replacement, since it is also free. But my first reaction to it was negative — the number of columns quickly got overwhelming, and I didn’t see a good way to manage my multiple accounts (which seems odd, since that’s supposed to be its strong suit). I’m logged in with my main account, and all my other accounts get associated with that, so I can tweet easily from any account. But if I want to see all of their home streams, for instance, then I have to create several columns, and those aren’t easy to tell apart unless I look at the top of the column — on the icon bar to the left, I just see a number of identical icons for the type of stream I’m viewing.
So, I tried Twitterific, which was reviewed highly in the TidBits newsletter. I like the look of Twitterific, and it does many of the things the Twitter app did. I can switch between accounts more easily than I can in Tweetdeck, for instance. And for each account, I can quickly view the Home feed, Mentions, Messages, Likes, Lists, and Searches. This is all great, but I have a few quibbles — the Likes stream shows me the tweets I’ve liked, for instance, but there isn’t a quick way to see which of my tweets have been liked or retweeted (unless my account was quoted or replied to in the tweet, when it would show up in Mentions). Twitterific also doesn’t allow me to see what I’ve recently tweeted.
So I decided to go back to Tweetdeck to deal with these issues. In Tweetdeck, I set up a column for each of my accounts that has Notifications (likes by others, retweets, and new followers). I also set up a column for each of my accounts that has the User stream. This way, I can view all of this information in one place by opening Tweetdeck, but by removing all the other columns, it isn’t so overwhelming.
I’ll use Twitterific for reading my Twitter Feeds, checking my mentions, managing my lists, checking messages, and seeing what I’ve liked. But I’ll switch to Tweetdeck to see what Notifications I’ve received and what I’ve tweeted (and whether those tweets have been liked, etc.). This 2-app solution ought to do almost everything I’m used to doing.
So far, I haven’t checked out the third recommended app in the Tidbits article, Tweetbot. Maybe it would do everything, but from what I could gather from the article, it would probably leave some things out as well. So for now, I’ll try these two and then decide if I want to check out Tweetbot, too.
Of course, Twitterific costs $7.99 (discounted right now form $19.99) and Tweetbot costs $4.99 (down from $10 it seems), so replacing the Twitter app isn’t free unless you can get everything you need from Tweetdeck. If I had a huge monitor or fewer accounts to follow, then Twitterific might be enough for me, but as it is, it will take more than one app to replace my old Twitter app on a Mac.
Kendall Dunkelberg 