Mrs. Mecomber's Scrapbook Talking technology, computers, and the Internet… for the average computer user

I’m a little surprised how few choices exist for desktop Twitter applications. Seriously. Twitter is wildly popular, yet the only *big* desktop apps I am aware of is TweetDeck and Seesmic. That’s it?! Unless I’m missing something. HootSuite doesn’t even HAVE a desktop app, just a browser app. Someone correct me if I am wrong, because I would love to toodle around with something else besides TweetDeck and Seesmic. Call me old school, but I like my choices.

Tweetdeck and Seesmic perform *OK*. The TweetDeck on my iPhone crashes all the time (sounds like it’s a common problem, too), and the desktop app has some quirks (at least, for my system). Seesmic has been very reliable. I have never had it crash, actually. But Seesmic is a little too big and bloated for a simple Twitter user like me. Seesmic is an app suited for social networking fiends, who want to keep tabs on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz (who uses this, I wonder?!), and Ping.fm. I use none of those except Twitter. So Seesmic is a big weighty for me, like using a shovel to sip soup.

Anyway, I like Seemic enough for Twitter, but it has a few annoying quirks that have me looking for another app. For one, you cannot skin the interface. You’re stuck with the black and yellow. UGLY. Looks like a boys school bus! And I greatly dislike black backgrounds. YUK.

Also, you cannot really scroll through the Twitter entries. I can’t, at least. If I do, the column jumps and skips. I have to tediously clickclickclick the small scroll arrow to scroll through the entries. It gets old REAL fast.

There’s no way to shrink the columns or entries. Seemic allows you to add multiple rows of columns– very helpful if you use Twitter lists like I do. Unfortunately, you have to scroll– that is, clickclickclick— the horizontal scroll arrow to see the columns. I love TweetDeck because they have columns that you can flip– you view one column at a time, and it’s so easy to flip from one column to the next. That is THE BEST feature of TweetDeck. I don’t understand why Seesmic and HootSuite don’t do that. Instead, they make you clickclickclick vertically or horizontally, and it’s aggravating after a while. Is there some kind of Twitter app creation school that we can send some of these apps to? TweetDeck leads the best school brigade for intuitiveness, but it constantly crashes. Seesmic is very reliable, but sure could use some lessons from TweetDeck’s columns.

clickclickclick *sigh* clickclickclick

OK, now for the good stuff. Seesmic has some really nice built-ins, like the Klout number feature. Every pal you see has a Klout number (even though I think the whole Klout thing is a little overrated), and instead of going to the Klout website to view them, Seesmic posts them very easily. It even displays the Klout topics of your pals. I know, I know, Klout scores are kind of juvenile, like kids in Boys school 11 – 16 year olds. But some people (especially advertisers) like it, so… whatever. It’s a “fun” measurement, not a boarding school exam, so no complaints here.

There’s much more to Seesmic than what I have mentioned here. Like I said, it’s a meaty app for the social networking monster. I just use Twitter, so it’s a bit overkill.

I give Seesmic a 3 out of 5. It works very well, and is readable. But the ugly skin and the inability to properly scroll through the columns, especially when compared to TweetDeck’s illustrious capability, flattens the score. Seesmic is free, so that’s a plus. If they fixed those two things, it would be a dream.

Note: Seesmic did not compensate me for this review.