It's hard to remember a time before the 140-character messages on Twitter weren't integral to our modern society. As a platform, Twitter redefined social media, and its official iPhone app is the main gateway to that experience. Here you'll find nearly every tool a dedicated member of the Twitteratti would want, though they're mixed in with some features you might not want.
Twitter is available for free from the Apple App Store, and easily installs on just about every iOS device you can lay your hands on. The price is unbeatable, but there are still a few worthy third-party offerings for iPhone Twitter users. One of the oldest, and best, Twitterrific 5, is also free and includes handy gesture controls. Tweetbot 4 is the luxury Twitter client at $9.99, but packs in style and usability.
Students of Twitter's history will recall that the Twitter app was originally a third-party offering called Tweety, and that Twitter was notorious for being unavailable. Nowadays, the Twitter app has grown into a cross-platform experience, providing the same look and feel regardless of which device you're on. The app looked great and responded smoothly on an iPhone 6 ( at Amazon) . Also, Twitter has taken great pains to improve its uptime and capacity. Fail whales and trips to Tweet Jail still happen, but they're mostly a thing of the past.
Social media pros, however, continue to load their smartphones with a social aggregator app, such as Hootsuite ($99 Per Month at HootSuite) or Buffer. These are one-stop-shop apps for keeping pace with not just multiple Twitter accounts, but also multiple accounts across various social networks, and scheduling posts to all those accounts, too.
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True Blue
Rather than bombard your eyes with a cacophony of color, the Twitter app sticks to a more sophisticated color scheme of black and white, reserving muted shades of digital bluebird blue for the top bar only. It looks practical without being too serious, a simple design that takes into consideration the business users and content on the site. The app's look is sharp enough to still be appealing to people who use Twitter for personal or casual reasons, too.
A nice touch on the interactive side: Double-tapping the home icon at the lower left forces the window to scroll back to the top automatically, which means less finger flicking for users. Pull down from the top, and content begins to reload.
Buttons at the top are for finding and creating Tweets, while the buttons along the bottom slice your view of Twitter in different ways: mentions, your own Tweets, group and private direct messages, and so forth. Weirdly, the official Twitter app makes it very difficult to find the list funtionality—which you use to create custom feeds of specific accounts.
New Tweeting
Odds are you have a Twitter username and password, and perhaps more than one. Many Twitter apps let you manage multiple accounts from the same app, but the official app is designed with simplicity in mind. If you've added accounts to your iPhones account management menu in Settings, Twitter will automatically load up those profiles. Unfortunately, if you have a private or rarely used account that you don't want saved into your iPhone's settings, you're out of luck. The official Twitter app requires it.
After you've set up all your accounts, you can toggle among them using the Accounts button. Switching among accounts is easy, fast, and efficient.
A button in the upper right starts a new Tweet, with a handy counter indicating how many characters you have left. Links and Tweets that quote other Tweets have a preview of the attached content, but the focus is on the writing.
Drafts would be one of Jill's favorite features of the Twitter app, except that it's slightly confusing when you look at the options that are available. There's no button to create a draft, instead you have to hit the X-button and then select Save draft, and navigating to the drafts folder takes far too much tapping. Also, Twitter's iPhone app doesn't have the ability to schedule tweets to post at another date and time, a highly desired feature. Social media power users who need this feature can find it in an aggregation app, such as Hootsuite.
Of course, Twitter isn't just 140-character utterances. It's grown to include polls, videos, Vines, and even edited snapshots. The photo feature mimics the basic functionality of photo-sharing site Instagram to a large extent, and it's only available on Twitter's mobile apps, not the website. Snap a photo using your iPhone, and Twitter offers dramatic filter effects, cropping and resizing tools, and an auto-enhance button.
Twitter has eight photo effects in all, with a ninth option in the interface, No Filter, which I'm going to say doesn't count. You can see all the photo filters applied to the same image in a grid, helping you decide which one is best among your choices, which is quite different from the Instagram experience in which you swipe through previews but can't see side-by-side comparisons. All in all, it's a very Instagram-like experience.
Despite the rise of live video, Periscope, which is owned by Twitter, has yet to be integrated into the official Twitter app. If you want to share or stream your slice of life, you'll have to fire up the Periscope app or try Facebook's take on live, mobile video.
Make It Official
If you've used other Twitter apps, you'll notice right away that the official app is a dramatically more in-depth experience. You can, for example, edit much of your account right from within the app. You can also see an in-depth breakdown of your Twitter activity, like how many impressions a given Tweet received. Metrics like these are usually reserved for social media professionals, but very few other apps can access this information on mobile.
There are also fun flourishes like the GIF button, to quickly drop an animated image into your Tweet. There's also the controversial (read: people complained about it on Twitter) heart animation that plays each time you favorite a post. (Max finds it perfectly acceptable, despite the complaints.) There's also private group messaging over Twitter DM, and for that you'll need the official app.
Other apps will let you block other users and report them for abusive behavior, but the official app goes the extra mile with an in-depth but brief form. This helps Twitter address the most egregious problems more quickly, and that makes the Twitter experience better for everyone.
Along with those great first-party offerings come the features we like less, however. Ads are the biggest one; brands can pay to have their Tweets promoted into your timeline. You can close these, after explaining why you didn't like it, but they are nowhere to be found on third-party Twitter apps. Another is the algorithmically ordered Twitter stream, that promotes Tweets Twitter thinks you'll like, similar to how Facebook manipulates your emotions. Sorry, that shoud read "manages your feed." It's really annoying, since it removes Tweets from their context and makes browsing your feed quite confusing.
Though you can opt out of Twitter's reordered stream (Max did so), a While You Were Away box will occasionally pop up to offer some of the same Tweets. There are also Moments, which are aggregated Tweets around current events, but the only time Max peruses these offerings is when a fat-fingered errant tap draws him in.
One new feature is the Connect tab, which pulls up a list of users Twitter thinks you would like to follow based on the people you already follow and your interactions with other Tweets. A bar across the top shows trending accounts, which if you're in the US means a bunch of political accounts.
A new Find Friends button is a little misleading; this gives you the option to sync your address book with Twitter (and continue syncing, indefinitely, unless you specify otherwise). This is a common practice among mobile apps and lets the app provider vacuum up a bunch of personal information in order to alert you whenever a friend creates an account. From a security perspective Max is not a fan, especially since companies have been known to sell or repurpose this data for advertising. Furthermore, you might not want to follow everyone in your address book.
That said, security is one of the big reasons to use the official Twitter app. When you activate two-factor authentication with Twitter, the app doubles as a mobile authenticator. When someone tries to log in to your account, you can authorize or reject (hopefully the latter!) the attempt from within the app. Facebook has a similar feature, but Twitter's approach is streamlined and reminiscent of Duo Mobile ($0.00 at Duo) ($0.00 at Duo)'s tap-to-log-in feature.
A Little Bird Told Me…
The official Twitter app offers the most comprehensive Twitter experience, without question. The options available, like GIFs and polls, the depth of the features like analytics, and security features are great. The private functions of the expanded direct messages, too, are excellent and help to make the Twitter app feel like a portal to an entire social experience, one that is far more dynamic than Facebook.
But along with all that good stuff comes the stuff we like less. Ads and promoted Tweets are annoying, and the reordered timeline especially feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes Twitter worthwhile. Changes like this are a reminder that Twitter, and specifically the Twitter app, are made for the benefit of Twitter the company, not necessarily the user on the other side of the phone.
Because of its powerful integration with the Twitter service, however, we're giving the official app a good score. It deserves it! But we're withholding the Editors' Choice. Other Twitter apps may not have the bulk of features, but many have excellent design far beyond what the official app offers.
If you're new to Tweeting or even if you're a seasoned Tweeter looking to up your game, check out The 15 Absolute Best Twitter Tips.
The official Twitter iPhone app crams in a ton of features that only Twitter could supply, most of which add to the social networking service's appeal.
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