As a Twitter developer (my product, Twit Menulet, is here), I’ve often been asked what I think is the “best” Twitter client for Mac. And, in fact, a significant minority of folks searching for twitter clients include the word “best” in their search. Look at this Google Trends graph comparing searches for “twitter client” and “best twitter client”:
Search for "twitter client" vs. "best twitter client"
I have to admit that searching for the “best” Twitter client makes some sense at first blush. Indeed, I myself have occasionally searched for the “best” software of one sort or another. However, as the developer of a very carefully targeted product, I must say that I’ve come to abhor the generic, unconstrained question of which software is “best”. It turns out that the “best” software for a given purpose depends very much on who will be the user of that software.
Let’s take two examples:
- Syrinx is an extraordinarily simple, free client. One account is allowed, and the tweets are displayed in a list. That’s pretty much it. You can send tweets by entering the text in a box and pressing enter (note that, as far as I can tell, <return> characters aren’t allowed in the tweets themselves).
I think that Syrinx is OK for cheapskates and first timers. It is the minimal possible functional client. For power-users and Twitter addicts, though, it is literally worthless because the interface is no better than the normal online Twitter interface. On the other hand, we get a lot of users migrating from Syrinx, so this is why I say that Syrinx is reasonable for “first timers”—folks who have never used a client before. Syrinx may introduce these people to the idea of a client, and may get them thinking about the possibilities. - Twit Menulet (my favorite!) is a powerful client with a revolutionary interface. Multiple accounts are allowed, and the tweets are displayed in a River-of-News format, most recent first. Powerful as it is, though, we’ve taken some tough design decisions with Twit Menulet. These decisions mean that a user must sometimes know exactly what he or she wants in order to find it. Following a user, for example, is somewhat counter-intuitive…one must first search for the user, then click on one of their tweets to follow.
In short, Twit Menulet is probably not for newbies. Most of our users have several Twitter acounts, and many use another client in addition to Twit Menulet. Most of them use Twit Menulet as a background monitor, then use global hotkeys to pull the app to the front on demand. Furthermore, Twit Menulet is a for-pay app, which means that the user needs to consider Twitter important enough to be worth spending a few bucks on. This is a different kind of user than the Syrinx user.
In summary, the “best” Twitter client for you is going to change over time. You’ll want different things now than you do later. If you use Twit Menulet, though, I promise that we’ll listen to your needs and try to change with you over time.