TweetDeck vs Twhirl review

Posted on April 27, 2009 at 5:45 am

Two of the most popular Twitter clients for Windows are TweetDeck and Twhirl. Both run off Adobe AIR and have lots of features and customizable options. Since I’ve started using Twitter more regularly, I’ve seen myself list of Twitter clients narrow down to these two.

In this post, I will try to give a quick overview of the advantages and disadvantages of both Twitter clients. This is by no means an all-inclusive overview, so if you feel I missed something, feel free to share your opinion in the comments.

GUI Interface

One of the major differences between the two clients in the GUI interface. To me, Twhirl is just like TweetDeck configured for a single column view. I think one of the great innovations of TweetDeck is that it allows you to create multiple columns for replies, direct messages, Twitter searches, or just to see tweets from certain people.

TweetDeck Interface:

Twhirl Interface:

With Twhirl, you have to click on the button at the bottom to see only direct messages or replies. Of course, if you prefer your Twitter client to take up less screen real estate, then Twhirl is better (until TweetDeck comes out with tabbed columns).

However, the major disadvantage to Twhirl is the lack of the ability to create custom groups. If you’re following 20,000 people, you certainly are not going to be reading all their tweets. TweetDeck lets you filter tweets quickly and easily.

Twhirl does have a Favorites tab, but this only pulls from the list of favorites you setup on Twitter.com (basically one custom group).

Accounts

One major disadvantage to TweetDeck currently is multiple accounts. If you have a personal and business related Twitter account, there is not way to see both using TweetDeck, which is annoying.

Twhirl on the other hand, allow you to add as many accounts as you like, which is cool. So you can add two or three or more Twitter accounts and each account will show up as another Twhirl window.

The other advantage that Twhirl has over TweetDeck is that it supports other types of accounts, such as Identi.ca, lanconi.ca and FriendFeed.

Twitter Search

In terms of search, both clients are pretty good at that. In Twhirl, you can create a search and then “Activate” is, which basically makes it into a dynamic search that will continually update on it’s own.

In TweetDeck, you can also do the same thing by creating a new column, which will update automatically. What I like about TweetDeck more is that it also has some nice filter options that you can apply to the search, which you cannot do in Twhirl.

Also, TweetDeck has integration with TwitScoop, so you can quickly search the most happening topics quickly. Overall, I think TweetDeck wins in this category too.

Miscellaneous

The above items were the most important for me in a Twitter client, but there are other subtle differences between the two clients that may or may not better.

TweetDeck allows you to post updates to Facebook, whereas Twhirl lets you post updates to Ping.fm and Jaiku.
TweetDeck lets you change the colors of the client, but not the font. Twhirl lets you change the font, but not the color of the client.
Twhirl lets you resize columns, which is nice, but TweetDeck does not allow you to resize columns.
TweetDeck takes up a crap load of memory, whereas Twhirl does not. Usual instance of TweetDeck takes up 100 MB+ of RAM.
Creating custom groups in TweetDeck can sometimes lead to freezing if you follow a large number of people.

Everything else is pretty much the same. You configure how often replies, direct messages, etc are checked per hour and how notifications are shown on your desktop.

If you have any other opinions or if there is something I misstated, please let me know in the comments! Enjoy!

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Comments

One Response to “TweetDeck vs Twhirl review”

Brian Moore said on : April 27th, 2009 at 4:59 pm

Everyone really needs to start looking at DT(w) also known as DestroyTwitter.

You can get it at http://www.DestroyTwitter.com

You can talk to the creator: @destroyToday