Over the past few weeks I have been exploring different Twitter applications. I have started using Twitter a lot lately due to adding it to another website and wanted to find reliable applications that would cater to my requirements.

For my personal twitter account, I find Twitterfon for the iPhone/iPod Touch suits me just fine, as I mainly use my personal account from my iPhone. Having tried a few other free applications, I felt that Twitterfon was a simple application that worked well for keeping up to date with my friends tweets, replying to them and posting my own. Tweets are also coloured coded so it is easy to see any mentions you have. Alternatively the simple to use menu bar across the bottom displays buttons for Friends, Mentions, Messages, Favorites and Search. Clicking on any one of these will display a page dedicated to that function. Something I find works well is if you click on the username of one of your friends, this brings up a page solely containing that particular friends tweets, which I find useful as a catchup tool. The only downside I have with Twitterfon is the ad that shows up at the top of the screen, but I guess since the app is free, I should not complain too much.

For website purposes, I wanted a desktop twitter application that would give me a lot more freedom and choice over how to use my twitter account. I decided to try Tweetdeck for both the PC and MAC, which again is free to download. I found that the customisable columns within Tweetdeck worked well for me, it allows me to have several search columns open, as well as columns dedicated to my friends, direct messages, mentions, or anything else I need open all the time. I found it another easy application to use and have found it very reliable so far.

I am also trying Tweetdeck for the iPhone for my website account, which again allows me to have several columns open at once, saving me a tremendous amount of time as everything is right in front of me as I need it.

Whilst there are many applications for Twitter available, I found both Twitterfon and Tweetdeck are both very reliable, free, simple to use and definitely catered to the needs of my different twitter accounts. I would certainly recommend them to anyone to give them a try.

Click the appropriate links for more information about Twitterfon and Tweetdeck.

Which Twitter application do you recommend and why?