Twitter clients are like word processors and spreadsheets in the ’90s: they’re everywhere, on every device for every operating system. Whether you want to access your Twitter stream, check upon your friends’ location or just tweet the song you’re listening to - you can. If the App Store’s unofficial motto is “there’s an app for that”, Twitter could seriously use a “there’s a client for that” pitch someday.
And it’s not like developers haven’t spotted the gold mine in there: I know some guys who made serious money out of it and hell, Twitter has even acquired Tweetie from Atebits to make sure to deliver the best Twitter experience on the iPhone. You know, Loren’s app is simply the best client around and people were confused of going into the App Store, search for Twitter and download Echofon in exchange. It wasn’t exactly the best scenario for Twitter, and so instead of go developing their own software, they bought the king. As you can guess, this move made many 3rd party developers worried that they wouldn’t be able to keep up with the platform anymore: really, developing and selling a client for Twitter when it’s Twitter itself that has the best app around, renamed “Twitter for iPhone”, and gives it away for free in the App Store? It’s been difficult for many devs to accept the news and keep working on their stuff, and I’m not blaming them. But you know, I think that sometimes it’s all about offering different point of views: having the official client as competitor doesn’t necessarily mean you have to give up.
Let’s talk about the iPad now. What about Twitter clients on the iPad? There aren’t too many of them, and most of them are crap sold at $2.99. Fortunately, the Iconfactory has shown us once again what being great developers mean, and they released Twitterrific for iPad on day one and, as you may have read, it’s one of the best Twitter apps for iPad around. Not because it’s just better than the others (of course it is) but because it’s a really great piece of software on its own, period. There’s another developer though, who firmly believed in his creation and released a client on day one: Andrew Stone, the mind behind Twittelator. Twittelator for iPad (previously known as Twittelator Pad) was highly criticized for its “original” user interface and design choices, but Andrew kept working hard on the app, refined the experience and I now I have to say, Twittelator for iPad really is one of the best Twitter apps for iPad.
The best one, maybe? Keep on reading to find out.