Twitter Review

By Dan Bennett April 04, 2012 at 18:01 pm

WHAT IS IT?

Whether you want to find out what President Obama is up to, discover what your favourite premiership footballer does on a Friday night, or what Lady Gaga wears on a Sunday morning, Twitter is the place to be. In 140 characters or less celebrities, politicians and, your friends share what’s important to them. And now the social network has its very own app it means you’ll be able to get the latest gossip and news wherever you are.

WHAT'S IT LIKE?

Although Twitter was launched as a website first, it was born to be an app. The strength of the social network site is its immediacy - 140-character-long messages come direct from the people that are most important to you. And you can’t get much more immediate than having all of their updates one going direct to your phone.

The best example of this is found in the app’s Trends section, where you can see what the rest of the internet is talking about. It shows you what the most talked about topics are on Twitter right now. It’s the digital equivalent of being stood around the office watercooler.

On the Windows OS the presentation of the app is close to perfect. The fonts are large and easy to read, the menus are easy to browse and the tweets load in an instant. Newcomers will find all this simplicity welcoming, while veteran Tweeters will really appreciate how quickly everything works. More advanced features like posting geotagged photos and switching accounts work smoothly too.

Unfortunately, serious Tweet-fiends hoping for more complex functions might be disappointed. There’s no built-in tool for shrinking website addresses (after all, every character counts) and it doesn’t auto-complete when you @mention friends. Also there’s no integration with the rest of your phone. There’s no way to share the picture you’ve just taken straight from you’re gallery – you have to fire up the app first.

These are just small niggles though, in what is a great, free app. There’s likely to better Twitter apps in the future, but for now, this is good enough.