First Look: Tweetsville brings pro features to Twitter on iPhone

There are a number of Twitter apps available for the iPhone and iPod Touch -- and why not? Much like peanut butter and jelly, Twitter and the iPhone are a classic combination. Tweetsville [iTunes Link] from Tapulous is the newest Twitter client available from the App Store, and it offers up an interface and feature set that really gives the competition a run for its money.

But wait, doesn't Tapulous already make a Twitter application? They do, and Twinkle [iTunes Link] is a neat app. Although the two applications share some interface similarities, the scope and focus are actually very different. Twinkle's real user hook is in its geo-location features, whereas Tweetsville is a full-fledged Twitter application.

I'm a pretty addicted to Twitter, and have been searching for an app for my iPod touch that could help me monitor and manage my stream with ease. Tweetsville appears to be that app. I follow a lot of users and my biggest problem with some of the other Twitter applications (and with the m.twitter.com interface) is that I can't view a large number of tweets at one time. With Tweetsville, not only does it grab the last 200 tweets for me, if I leave the application and come back an hour later, it will pull up what I've missed. That means I can access 532 tweets at once, rather than just the last ten minutes or so. That's extremely handy.

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The Tweetsville interface is absolutely gorgeous. It's simple to use, but you also have options. For instance, if you aren't a fan of the speech bubble display, you can use a more simple list view. When viewing direct messages, you can see the entire dialog exchange, rather than having to click through each individual message.

Sending tweets and replying to users is easy and intuitive. Tapping on a tweet brings up the message, the option to send a reply or a direct message, the flag to favorite a tweet and the ability to view the users profile. You can also include a picture from your device library (or I assume, take a photo if you are using an iPhone) and Tweetsville will automatically upload the image to TwitPic and input the URL into a tweet.

There's a great "trends" button that shows the most popular phrases or hashtags on Twitter; Tweetsville's search ability is also without a doubt the most advanced that I have seen. Hyperlinks open up in a Tweetsville browser (though you can click a button to open the link in Mobile Safari), so you don't have to necessarily leave the app to check out a link.

Although the ability to toggle more than one account would be nice, I really can't find any major shortcomings in Tweetsville. It's a great client with lots of features and a very, very usable interface.

Take a look at the gallery above to see Tweetsville in action. The application is $3.99 US at the App Store and is available now.