Twitter for Blackberry App: Overview

This is a review of the newly released Blackberry Twitter App (marketed as the “Official App”).

This application was recently released to the public; however, I have been using a leaked version for the 8330 for the last month or so. So far I love it! It makes tweeting really enjoyable.

Speed and Fluency

Twitter for Blackberry runs extremely smoothly. I am using a Blackberry Curve 8330 which is about 2 years old now. I have a hybrid version of OS 5.0 running on it provided by Nathanix. The performance is better than OS 4.5 on the 8330, but not significantly, so this app should run well for those of you with OS 4.5.

Scrolling down large lists of tweets is quick and smooth; the app NEVER stutters! When you hit the bottom of the currently loaded list of tweets it loads a few more into the app; this is the only time using the app becomes a bit sluggish, but that is to be expected considering the device is downloading data over the network, loading it into the app, and you are scrolling around as well. This may not even occur on newer hardware.

Features

All of the expected features are included in this app:

• Post update to tweet
  • Add image from phone/take a new picture directly from the app
  • Automatically uploads the image using TwitPic
• Recent Tweets on homepage
  • Displays thumbnail of pictures uploaded to TwitPic below tweet – this is a great feature
• Direct Messages
• My Lists
  • Create new lists
  • View current lists
• My Profile
  • Shows all of the same information as Twitter.com
  • Edit your profile from the app
• Direct Messages
  • Compose Direct Message
  • View Direct  Messages
• Find People
  • Lets you find friends easily from within the app
• Search – self-explanatory
• Popular Topics
  • Current (Trending)
  • Recent
    • displays recent hot topics by tag; size of tags relative to popularity of topic (similar to WordPress tags for anyone familiar with WordPress)

Overall this app contains all of the Twitter features you need. It is much faster than other Twitter apps I have used, and the content is easy to read and seems more organized in general. For anyone who has been using the Facebook app for BlackBerry you will feel right at home, as the setup and design is very similar (although better overall and faster too). For those of you not already using it I suggest you give it a download and check it out!

Happy Tweeting,
Chris Hayes