For a long time I was using the official app provided by Twitter because it’s the first one I ever installed, and for a long time, I never looked back. Since it’s been so long, I decided to take another look in the Android Market to see what new and improved Twitter apps were available. Now that I have more than one Twitter account to manage, I really needed a Twitter Android client that could deal with multiple accounts.
After sifting through the many Twitter apps available, I finally settled on one called Tweetcaster. The reason for choosing this one (aside from the four and a half star rating), is due to the clean design, ease of use, and the fact that it can easily handle multiple Twitter accounts.
Setting Up Multiple Accounts On Tweetcaster
The main reason I wanted to try this app was because the main screen made it appear as though it could handle as many Twitter accounts as you want. From the main page when you first launch the app, you can see the big plus sign next to “Add Account”. Go ahead and start adding your accounts!
Once you log into each account, you’re ready to roll. The goofy bird icon is where you can view all of the tweets for the people you’re following. I really like how fast and easy it is to switch between tweets, mentions, messages, and other areas of your profile with just a single tap of the finger. Navigating through Twitter with this app is a breeze.
While you’re viewing any of these lists, just do a long-click on any one of the tweets and a pop-up window will appear where you can go directly to that person’s profile, send them a direct message, block the user or report them for spam.
Also, you can click on the menu option for more options like navigating the list, manually refreshing, reviewing followers and followees, modifying your settings or lastly enabling a tweet filter.
A tweet filter was a valiant attempt by Handmark to help people filter out those annoying users that seem to post updates every five minutes, flooding your entire view. Unfortunately, the filter doesn’t work quite as you’d expect. For example, when I tried typing “MakeUseOf” (not that I ever would, mind you), it filtered out all but one of the day’s tweets, even those that didn’t even have that word in it. Strange.
Just like the other areas of the app, the Followers and Following page is designed for fast navigation. Flip back and forth between the two with a single tap, then long-click on a user to visit their profile or send them a message.
When you do visit someone else’s account, you can navigate through their information just as easily as your own. See their Tweets, messages they’ve sent you, lists they’re following and more. Use the menu button to follow the user (if you’re not already), add a mention, or block them.
Aside from the different things you can do with the app, the thing I like about Tweetcaster is how easy it is to customize it. You can see this just from taking a look at the settings menu. Not only that, it’s integrated with popular outside services people usually use with Twitter like bit.ly, plixi and Twitvid.
In the customize menu, you’ll see all the ways you can tweak the appearance of the app. Change from a light to a dark theme, alter colors, font sizes, and the behavior when you click on URLs, or how notifications work.
When you click on the pen icon at the top of the main page, you’ll go directly to the tweet page where you’ll probably be spending most of your time in this app. It’s also the coolest area of this app because of all the things integrated into this one page. Click on the eye icon to see current tweets in the upper part of the screen (nice if you’re responding to someone). Click the menu button and you’ll see the integrated features like adding pictures, videos and shortening URLs.
By the way, even Instapaper, an app David wrote about before that lets you save webpages to read later, is also integrated into Tweetcaster.
Of course, a pleasant surprise – because I wasn’t even expecting it – is the fact that the creators of this app were thoughtful enough to include integrating Facebook into Tweetcaster. This means that in one fell swoop, you can post to both Twitter and Facebook with just a single, quick text message. A pretty convenient tool when you’re on the go and just want to let everyone on both social networks know what’s up.
Have you ever given Tweetcaster a try? What do you think? How does it compare to other Twitter Android clients that are on the Market? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.
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