When I first signed up for Twitter, all I used was their website. Later, I ventured into Twitterrific on my Mac. Then I started tweeting from my iPhone. Now, there's no shortage of Twitter clients on this device. There's Twitterrific, Twinkle, Twittelator, Tweetsville, Tweetie, and TwitterFon to name a few. If you're haven't guessed by the headline, this post will concern just the last two, Tweetie & TwitterFon ($2.99 and free, respectively).

At first, I just used Twitterrific. It was simple, let me post and read the timeline, and most importantly, remembered where I left off between launches. But I started to want more: searching, trends, ability to follow/unfollow, etc. I think I started using TwitterFon around version 1.1. It was nice, but didn't quite feel right. I kept hearing about Tweetie from many blogs and that it was, perhaps, the best Twitter client for the iPhone. So I bit and paid the $2.99 for version 1.1.

Now that both apps have been recently updated (Tweetie v1.2, TwitterFon v1.4 as of this writing), and include many similar features, I decided a comparison was in order. I'm not going to cover every single feature of each app, just the ones I tend to use.

Tweetie

Let's start with the supposed best-of-the-best, Tweetie. The first thing I (or pretty much anyone else) will notice is the UI. By default, Tweetie uses a chat bubble interface to show the timeline. Personally, I think this is wrong. The chat-bubble paradigm implies conversation; more specifically, conversation between parties. In Twitter-land, that would translate to everyone I'm following gathered in one room, all shouting. Since these tweets rarely follow the same topic, it would sound like a jumbled mess. Fortunately, you have the option of a "simple" theme.

However, even with the simple theme, there are still oddities in the UI. Take, for example, the refresh button. While the iPhone has a decent resolution, especially for a mobile device, it's still only a 3.5" screen. Every pixel matters. While, yes, I do value negative space in design, the horrible placement of the refresh button in Tweetie is not a good use of said negative space. When I get to the top of my timeline, the first visible piece of information I'm interested in is almost 1/3 down the screen.

Speaking of wasted space, the inbox/outbox buttons in the direct-message view are huge, disconnected, and just plain don't work, design-wise. Fortunately, I don't spend a ton of time in this view as I rarely use DMs.

Then there's the reply chain. The recent update of Tweetie has a nice way to drill down the chain, both directions. I think this works well, especially compared to previous versions. Previously, you could drill down through text links, but going back up the chain required using a navigation button at the top. This meant if I drilled down into 6-7 replies, I'd have to use what has essentially become a "back" button just as many times to get back to the timeline. This new method is much better.

Speaking of replies, there is a new method of replying, favoriting, and seeing the user profile in Tweetie. Swipe across the tweet to bring up a small tool bar with those functions. This has been described as "Hot UI Action." I kinda agree, with one major caveat: swiping in most apps (starting with Mobile Mail) means delete. You could get around this conceptually by thinking "delete is a right-to-left swipe, I'll swipe left to right to 'push' the tweet out of the way to get to these three buttons underneath." True. But right-to-left swipe still does the same thing, even though the tweet visually moves off screen to the right. It just doesn't feel right.

Often times, I want to search for trends, specific topics, or nearby tweets. Tweetie places all three of these functions (and two more) under the "More" tab at the bottom. Two things bother me about this view. I feel all three of these functions (nearby, trends, and text search) fall under the search umbrella, yet they are listed separately. Secondly, there is no "Edit" mode for the tab bar. So I'm stuck with the default order and placement. Want to put search or trends in the tab bar for easy access? Sorry.

Now, Tweetie does a few other things very, very well. I love having the ability to go to a person's profile and select "search @username" to see who else is talking to that user. It's a nice little feature to use if someone posts a question to the hive mind as John Hodgman likes to put it. I can tell if that user already has their question answered. Also, if someone posts a picture using twitpic, Tweetie will bring up just the picture, not the entire twitpic page in a Webkit view. It's a nice little touch that makes viewing pictures just a little nicer.

TwitterFon

I didn't obscure the conversation because tater-tots are awesome.

Now for TwitterFon. Basically, take most of my gripes about Tweetie and fix them. Let's start with speech bubbles. The only place these are used is in reply chains and direct message views. In both instances, it makes sense. You're looking at a conversation, usually about one topic. As a bonus, there's no navigation required to view reply chains. It's all right there. The one downside to TwitterFon's implementation is that it only shows this view if you follow both parties involved. I'm also pretty sure it won't display a reply chain for more than two people. I haven't had the ability to test this yet.

The refresh button? It's put in the proper place. Now, to be fair, Tweetie can't use this space for the refresh button. It supports multiple accounts and that area is used to navigate back to an account list. But I'm sure there are better ways to implement that.

TwitterFon also places all three search functions neatly on one page. Type to search, hit the speech-bubbles button for a list of trends, or tap the cross-hairs to find nearby posts within 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 250, or 500 miles. It just makes sense. The result? A nicely laid out UI for search, and no need for a "More" tab at the bottom.

Also in TwitterFon is a button that I wish were in all twitter clients: Friends. This button brings up a list of all the people you follow and will insert an @username. This is incredibly useful if I want to post a public comment to a specific user (or users) without having to remember their username, find a post from them in the timeline, or mis-use a reply if I'm posting something completely unrelated. Again, it makes sense.

Have said all this, there's a few things confusing about TwitterFon. Instead of using in-line text links for @ replies and URLs, you click a blue arrow icon (typically meaning "More Info") to open the link, or chose one if multiple links are in the tweet. Also, for replies, you can click on the tweet to bring up a single-tweet view then select "reply," or you can tap their picture in the timeline. The latter just isn't obvious, but it's there with less taping none-the-less. Actually, that's pretty much it for gripes against TwitterFon.

Conclusion

It pretty much goes without saying that I find TwitterFon to be the better app, but I still keep Tweetie on page 2 of my iPhone. I do so partially because of the ability to easily search for @replies (which could be fixed in TwitterFon with the inclusion of the already built friend list button), but mainly because I paid $2.99 for it and have to convince myself I still need it.

Now, I don't mean to knock Tweetie too much, it is still a really decent Twitter client. However, after seeing what TwitterFon can do for free with a better UI, I just don't understand how Tweetie gets so much more attention.

Lastly, a note to all Twitter-users. They're called "tweets," not "toots." (I'm looking at you @gruber & @hotdogsladies!) The former is a post on Twitter, the latter is another word for fart. Speaking of which, Tweetie 1.2 does have something else TwitterFon doesn't: a built in fart-noise function (along with flashlight) called PEE, Popularity EnhancEr. If that's your thing, go for it.