The Twitter desktop client war is charging ahead at full steam, with both Seesmic Desktop and Tweetdeck releasing big upgrades, and Tweetdeck offering an iPhone version for the first time.

Seesmic Desktop went first with a release candidate of version 0.3. The new version builds on Seesmic Desktop’s strong foundations by embracing service competition. Along with a strong list of URL shorteners, Seesmic now offers image uploading support for Pikchur, Posterous, TwitPic, Twitgoo & yfrog. Bit.ly support has been extended to include Bit.ly account integration, allowing users tokeep track of URL clicks. There is also a range of visual enhancements and feature improvements.

Market leader Tweetdeck isn’t sitting back and letting Seesmic Desktop grab all the attention though. The biggest change in the new version Tweetdeck is the ability to manage multiple accounts, to date Seesmic Desktop’s biggest selling point. Other features include synchronization with the iPhone client, including search queries, lists etc, improved video playback, a reply all feature, and the ability to block and report spam.

The newly released, free Tweetdeck iPhone client could be the killer difference between the two offerings. Tweetdeck on the iPhone brings the multi-column goodness of the desktop client to the iPhone, and it works so much better than other iPhone clients currently available. The visuals are rich, the feature set is all there, and you can thumb through your columns.

I’m impressed by Seesmic Desktops latest offering, particularly the move to embrace consumer choice among Twitter related services at a time other desktop clients are reducing choice. But Seesmic doesn’t have the iPhone application, and even if it did have one, they’d struggle to come close. With the syncing capability, Tweetdeck looks set to increase its marketshare on the desktop, and quickly take a huge chunk of the iPhone Twitter client market as well.

Unlike Twitter’s page views of late, development of Twitter tools continues to head north at an unbridled pace. Even before Twitter had its Oprah moment, Twitter clients have been the most popular area for Twitter tools. Today, there is well over 50 Twitter clients, and possibly even 100 if you count iPhone apps.

Given a sea of noise, developers have two options: they either try to improve on existing ideas, or they try to innovate and bring something new to the table. New Twitter client Mixero has gone for the latter.

The problem when you try to reinvent the wheel is you have to come up with a better idea. Mixero tries awfully hard, but that’s the problem: it tries way to hard, and delivers something that is confusing, aesthetically poor, and different for the sake of it (solutions looking for problems.) It’s still in private alpha, and probably because they’re not sure if using it might cause people with certain conditions to have a fit.

Let me explain starting from the basics. Mixero is neither a single column Twitter browser, or a multi column like the popular TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop. What it is though is difficult to describe. Mixero is a center navigation bar with columns either side (see above.) On the left hand side you have your Twitter stream, and on the right you have your contacts and “channels.” Contacts can be grouped, which is a solid idea.

From this point you have various features you can use. If you want your replies and main stream in different columns, tough luck, but you have put them in separate windows….indeed this feature is used as a selling point. Notably the only client I can think that did something close to this was Twhirl, and that was such a popular option it was abandoned when its replacement Seesmic Desktop was launched.

Mixero, unlike a number of recently launched clients doesn’t lack for features, but you’d need a great drug supplier to work them all out. You can, in no particular order, create groups, active lists, contexts, filters and channels. I should also warn, you could also be arrested for the drugs you’ll take you work all those out. Even better, there’s an iPhone version on the way as well!

The confusing array of choices aside, there are a few nice features that other clients should adopt. “Smart preview” allows you to mouse over a photo or video link and get a preview before clicking thru. Likewise, a mouseover on a short URL offers the actual link. A sort of minimal overlay bar highlighting users could be nifty for some, and is at least visually interesting.

Some reviews are saying that it’s innovative, a great solution, and even a TweetDeck killer. It’s not, however I’ll concede that maybe for the extremely patient power user with a great supply of meth, it’s a brilliant client. For everyone else, sticking your hand in a paper shredder is far easier.

Here’s the Mixero demo video:

Twitter desktop client Seesmic Desktop launched back in April with limited features and like its predecessor Twhirl, was as ugly as sin lacked in the looks department. But things for the new comer are on the up.

At the beginning of May, Seesmic Desktop became the first Twitter desktop client to properly incorporate the Facebook stream; that is, complete Facebook data with the ability to like and view threads. Impressive, but one step on the road to challenge front runner TweetDeck. I’m pleased to note that in its latest version, the frog may have turned into a half decent looking prince.

Seesmic founder Loic Lemeur has finally taken design away from the engineers and handed Seesmic Desktop to someone who isn’t visually retarded visual design challenged. Today, Seesmic looks great….sexy even. Gone are the awful background gradients, replaced instead by subtle color themes that define various columns. Coming from the minimalist conformity of TweetDeck, it is a little bit of a shock at first, but likewise the choices make sense, and they work. Looks have been scrubbed out of the negative column for Seesmic Desktop.

Is it enough to make me switch though? Maybe not quite yet, although I’m close and I may yet change my mind. Facebook isn’t a killer app for me, but multi-account support in Twitter is, and that’s something Seesmic Desktop does that Tweetdeck doesn’t. There are though still limitations with Seesmic Desktop. There’s still no options for visual customization; while it looks great now, I feel that the text is a little cramped, and I would love the ability to do white on black. Seesmic Desktop is still a little feature poor compared to TweetDeck; I regularly cite the lack of TweetShrink, but likewise a choice of URL shortening is something else that immediately stands out for me. For others, there’s a range of extras Seesmic Desktop doesn’t yet offer.

If you haven’t tried Seesmic Desktop lately, it’s worth another look. You can download it here.

Some have suggested that with Facebook opening up and SPI for developers that they are changing the game. That maybe the case but Seesmic Desktop, the next generation version of Twhirl, just dropped version 0.2RC on their testers with support for Facebook baked into it. I still have a few bones of contention with Seesmic Desktop (more on than further down) but if Seesmic polishes this up the right way it definitely is going to have an impact on both Twitter and Facebook.

As you can see from the screen capture above once I added my Facebook account to Seesmic Desktop I was able to post from the application to Facebook. As well, the current default Home display will show posts from both Twitter and Facebook in the same timeline. I did a test of posting to my Facebook account from Seesmic Desktop, after switching the “SHARE as” to show my Facebook account, and it worked fine.

The only thing I have found is you can’t reply yet to someone who has posted in your Facebook timeline. I’m still playing with it so there still might be things I haven’t found yet.

Now as for some of my problems with this build. Well, the biggest one really is that you still can’t resize the left most column so everything still looks squished together. The one other thing I would like to see now that it supports Facebook is some way to differentiate between Twitter messages and Facebook messages.

As it stands right now they share the same color scheme and it can be confusing as to which message is coming from which service at a quick glance. Yes, you can try and read the small text at the bottom of each message but having a different color option would make it much easy to tell at a glance.

I’m tempted to start using Seesmic Desktop fulltime but the ‘squished’ feeling of the main timeline display is rather irritating. Other than that this release with Facebook integration is looking pretty good and I know that it will excite a lot of folks to see the support for Facebook.

Keep it up guys, you’re getting close to fulltime usage, for me at least.

The Twitter application market is booming at the moment off the back of Twitter’s phenomenal growth this year. Seesmic launched Seesmic Desktop yesterday (the new Twhirl), delivering multi-account access to a multi-column client. TweetDeck is out with a new version that promises to have fixed its memory issues, and adds some extra features for good measure. Mac client Nambu is starting to get a lot of attention, and rightly so, it’s quick and offers a non-Ajax alternative. CoTweet doesn’t offer a desktop client yet, but brings CRM to Twitter, marking a significant step forward in the Twitter landscape.

This post was going to start out as a Twitter client review, but Rafe Needleman wrote the post I would have written at CNet yesterday, give or take a few things I would have covered differently (read it here.) The choice we have in Twitter clients has never been better, and yet none are perfect.

The feature problem

The differences between each client come down to features, with no client offering the lot. TweetDeck may have popularized the multi-column layout, but its feature set is also the richest on the market. This may seem like a small thing, and it’s a personal preference, but the feature I love the most on TweetDeck is TweetShrink. This one button allows you to automatically shrink a Tweet that has gone over the character limit. And yet TweetDeck doesn’t support multiple Twitter accounts and a range of other services (although it does support 12seconds and Facebook.) Seesmic Desktop rocks with multiple Twitter account support, although doesn’t support other services yet (Twhirl did, and we’re told these are coming.) Seesmic Desktop doesn’t offer the variety of additional Twitter tools TweetDeck does, although does offer image capture by webcam (a nice touch.) Nambu seems to be more a front for URL shortening and picture hosting services owned by the company that wrote it, and you’re locked in. DestroyTwitter, another smart multi-column Twitter client supports skinning, a feature the other clients simply don’t offer.

It’s unreasonable to expect that the creators of each Twitter client could and should offer every single imaginable feature, even beyond the constraint that for most, there’s little to no business model/ revenue from these clients (at least yet.)

But there is an army of people out there who given a platform could provide these features.

Open Twitter client

The solution to the feature problem is an open Twitter client. A Twitter platform might not be the right description, but it goes close.

This Twitter client would offer support for plugins or extensions is a similar way that Firefox does. Users could create plugins that add features to the client. For example, a plugin that added Identi.ca support to TweetDeck, TweetShrink to Seesmic Desktop, or even Flickr image uploading to Nambu. If you get the ground work right, the only limitation is the technical constraints and imagination of your users.

There may be programing issues in offering an open platform in Ajax, for example I don’t recall ever seeing an Ajax program offer plugins, although DestroyTwitter offers skins, suggesting that there is a way to bring in additional content/ services. Nambu is OS X native, so plugin support is possible.

Encouraging competition

As mentioned above, Nambu suffers from lock-in to services owned by the same people who wrote the client. The new version of TweetDeck has actually reduced the options of URL shortening. Most services only offer TwitPic for image uploading. As we increase the diversity of Twitter clients, we’re actually seeing a consolidation in the tie-ins to related services.

An open Twitter client would allow competing services to write their own plugins, giving users a true choice within the client. For example, I’d love to be able to link in to Skitch for images in my Twitter client at the push of a button or two, as opposed to the current need to upload, visit the site, grab the URL, then paste it in. There are a range of 3rd party stats sites now that would make nice value adds; TweetDeck offers Twitscoop, but imagine other services, complete with search (Tweetstats or similar sites.)

This isn’t to say that a service like TwitPic aren’t worthy (it’s a great service) but lock-in reduces competition, and reduced competition usually results in slower innovation. It’s in the communities interest for there to be a vibrant set of related tools accessible via their Twitter client.

Conclusion

The idea of an open Twitter client may to some degree be a pipe dream. We may not see it upfront, but I’d bet that a lot of the services pushed in clients like TweetDeck now aren’t offered from the goodness of the heart, but through business relationships which may or may not include money; if they don’t include money now, they likely soon will, because these 3rd party tools want users, and a button in a Twitter client can possibly deliver users by the million.

On alternative is to go open source, although that may be stretch, but likewise is not impossible.

Delivering an open Twitter client done right could end up being a selling point that defines the client in a sea of competition. Imagine a TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop with hundreds of plugins and theme options which you can pick and choose from, vs an existing client with a limited range of value adds. That’s got to be an appealing selling point, if someone is willing to take it on.

The new version of Twhirl, now known as Seesmic Desktop, was launched in San Francisco this evening and takes the good fight to popular Twitter client TweetDeck.

Seesmic Desktop is a complete code rewrite, delivering a fresh user experience and feature set. Included in the new version is multiple column and single app support (with Twhirl you had separate windows.) The defining point in the release is the ability to group multiple sources into one central stream, including multiple Twitter accounts. For example, you can blend your Identi.ca and Twitter streams in the one column/ view.

The new client also gets a user interface change, with the introduction of a side bar of navigation results.

We’d tell you more but the live stream failed about 10 minutes into the presentation, not exactly a positive omen. There’s also not a full list available at the time of writing about the additional features. From the choppy video which replaced the black fail screen, there was mention of recording from webcam, multiple image upload support (not sure if this was just Twitter related), and list/ search support similar to TweetDeck.

From what I have seen, it looks like a winner and will offer strong competition to TweetDeck. The multi-account and service support is a feature I’d use, so I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it.

To get Seesmic Desktop, sign up at desktop.seesmic.com and Seesmic will email you a download link when the client is released. No idea yet as to when it will be available. It’s now released. Downloading now.

Update: the preview release only supports Twitter. The other negative: it’s not pretty to look at.