I have a confession to make. I don’t own a smartphone, I don’t even want a smartish phone. My cellphone is bottom of the range and boring. Each time my cellphone was ‘misplaced’, I went crawling back to my old faithful Samsung. I always find myself looking at Tim’s smartphone with an envious eye. So imagine my happiness when I discovered Twittme, a mobile Twitter application that works on all devices, even my mini Samsung!
Usability:
Accessing Twittme couldn’t be easier. Once you arrive at the Mobi site you will be asked to enter your login details, after which you are presented with your home feed. Like most mobile sites the navigation is simple and easy to use. Along the top of the page is the main navigation bar with links to your home feed, profile, replies, direct messages and other added features, such as Twitter Search. Under each Tweet in your home and profile feed is a star to favourite a Tweet, a pencil indicating reply, an eraser to delete one of your Tweets and a speech bubble to reply to a Tweet.
Twittme for mobile. Image Credit: Bluesting
Features:
There are a couple of added features on Twittme that I found very useful. You can favourite a Tweet by clicking on the star. The Tweet is then catalogued under your favourites tab at the top of the page. This functionality works a bit like a bookmark. You can also send Tweets as an SMS to one of your contacts by clicking on the mobile phone icon under the Tweet. But probably the most talked about feature of Twittme is the ability to write 240 characters in a Tweet. However, if you do decide to make use of this feature, your Tweet will be split up into two consecutive Tweets.
Tweetme also comes out tops from a safety perspective. Instead of saving your login details on their server, your details are saved on your phone in an encrypted cookie. This reduces the possibility of your details being captured in the unfortunate event of their server’s being hacked.
Interface:
The interface is simple and clean and the site navigation is smooth and consistent across all the various features. The navigation bar above is intuitive and allows you to navigate from your profile to your home feed and back to your profile easily. Avatars are shown above each Tweet, making the site easier on the eye when compared to plain text. Links appear in green and are clickable.
Twitter’s own mobi version could learn a thing or two from Twittme’s functionality and design. If you compare the two you will see that Twitter’s mobile version has no search, no favourites and no way to see who is following you. If loss of functionality wasn’t bad enough, the interface is rather unsightly displaying no avatars, just plain old text.
Twittme interface. Image Credit: Mobile Twitter Twittme.
Twittme interface. Image Credit: Mobile Twitter Twittme.
Twittme is a great application for those who don’t have fancy phones, yet still want the full usability of Twitter. Because of all the added features and phone integration, I would have to say that Twittme is my new favourite mobi site. The site is so mobile it doesn’t even have a web address, but you can visit the mobi site here.
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