Twitter Implements Threaded Comments, Sort Of

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Identi.ca/FriendFeed)

Today Twitter made a quiet announcement on their developer mailing list that could have profound implications. On the mailing list, Alex Payne, a leading developer at Twitter gave the following announcement:

"I'm happy to announce a minor change to the API that should have a major impact on the Twitter community. The /statuses/update method now takes an optional parameter: in_reply_to_status_id. As you might guess, this allows API clients to specify which status a status to be posted is in reply to, rather than our system assuming that it's in reply to the last message posted by the user specified by "@username". "

What does this mean? Essentially now any Twitter client can now associate another post as a reply to another existing post. This means that Twhirl or TweetDeck can allow a user to post a normal status update, and provide a "+" sign underneath (or "@" similar to the Twhirl FriendFeed client), and a new post can be appended as a reply to the previous post.

What's very interesting though is that Twitter is not requiring "in_reply_to_status_id" requests to have an "@" symbol in them. Therefore, this could very well mean the death of "@'s" on Twitter as more and more clients begin to fully implement the API call. Twitter seems to be breaching FriendFeed territory on this one, if they could just start allowing better aggregation.

I expect to fully see new implementations of this feature very soon - the request is quite simple, and would just take some simple UI enhancements. Twhirl I know has these built in already to their FriendFeed client - they would just need to utilize the same code and they would have it in the Twitter client. Now the question becomes, will Twitter's API limits allow this feature to work? It will be interesting to watch.

Posty's Single-Window Microblogging AIR App Adds Identi.ca Support

Adobe's AIR platform is seeing a rise in applications designed to bring Web activity to your desktop. From TweetDeck to Twhirl, Alert Thingy to Feedalizer, a host of new apps have debuted in the last few months, offering the ability to view or post to one or more services including Twitter, FriendFeed, Seesmic, Pownce, Jaiku and lately, Plurk or Identi.ca.

But not every AIR app gets all services, and those that support more than one service usually require more than one window to get the job done. A newer entrant to this space, Posty, authored by Cesare Rocchi, offers support, as of today, for six different Web update services, all in a single window, allowing those with accounts in multiple places to send simultaneous updates to more than one location.

Posty, from a single black square window, lets you post updates to six different services, including Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr, Friendfeed, and as of this morning, Identi.ca. And if you have logins at more than one of them, you can simply use the checkboxes to make sure your updates go to multiple destinations at once.

While the application is rather spartan in its ability to be configured, it simply gets the job done. At the top is a horizontal bar featuring each of the six individual services, a posting window, and a settings window, where you can add your login information.

Key to making the application useful is that for each service, be it Twitter, Identi.ca or FriendFeed, for example, you can view your own entries, entries from your friends, the public feed, see replies, or you can use integrated search.

As with other AIR apps, you can take appropriate actions per service. For FriendFeed, you can like or make comments. On Identi.ca, you can reply or go directly to the update. And on Twitter, you can reply, mark as a favorite, or open the note in your Web browser. This wasn't always available, as in the very first release of Posty earlier this month, you couldn't see your friends' updates, only your own and public timelines. After I traded e-mail with Cesare a couple weeks ago, he was quick to respond with a new version incorporating the update.

Unlike more well-known AIR applications, like Twhirl (which Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb called a "killer app" today) Posty handles all these services in a single window, utilizing the icons. Instead of monopolizing screen space with multiple parallel windows, Posty takes an all in one strategy.

When I first reviewed TweetDeck, some people said they were "tired of black" when it came to AIR applications, so if you're not a big fan of black, Posty isn't really for you, as that's how it looks, period. There are options to change the text color from "Sunny" to "Snowy", "Icy" and in between, but it doesn't actually change the app.

Cosmetics aside, Posty has given us a strong single-window application to both consume and send updates to multiple microblogging services at once. Identi.ca is rising now, and gaining momentum thanks to Twitter's occasional issues, and its open source roots. With services like Posty making it an equal player early on, the new kid on the block gets another boost.

To download Posty for yourself, find it here: http://tinyurl.com/getposty.

TweetDeck Twitter Client Gains High Profile Amid High Expectations

On July 4th, I had the opportunity to help introduce TweetDeck to the blogosphere as a fully-featured Twitter client, based on the Adobe AIR platform, with Summize integration, and the option to show Tweets in multiple columns, including dedicated screen space for replies, and customizable grouping. While the Twitter client space has already seen good penetration by Twhirl, Feedalizer and others, TweetDeck has gained a strong following over the last ten days, with many testing, and a good number, including me, using it as our default interface to Twitter's microblogging platform.


Tweetip Shows the Boom in TweetDeck Use and Discussion
In fact, the blog Tweetip, which watches Twitter closely to capture inflection points of when one term or another rapidly changes on the service, captured the boom in TweetDeck commentary last week, showing how much more mindshare the application got following our first post. But just because a lot more people know about the service doesn't mean it has a free ticket to application stardom. I asked people on Twitter and FriendFeed yesterday if they had made the switch. (See the FriendFeed discussion)

For every "Yes, been using it since launch+1, and still using and loving it!" and "Yes... And yes. Like it a lot" I received, I also got a few responses like "No. uses too much real estate" or "Use tweetdeck but prefer twhirl because it gives me Friendfeed and multiple twitter user accounts at the same time."

While I like TweetDeck's ability to display in multiple columns as a full-screen application in the background, others prefer the single-column look of alternative applications. Also, over the last week-plus, I heard calls to separate Twitter replies from Twitter direct messages. And in both cases, developer Iain Dodsworth delivered. Both the single-window feature, as well as a single column for DMs are available in the latest beta.


TweetDeck Added Support for Direct Messages

TweetDeck Added Support for a Single Column View
With such a healthy debut, users are expecting TweetDeck to grow up and do even more, including incorporating FriendFeed streams, as Twhirl and other newcomers do. I don't know that Iain has these plans, but if he did, the crowd which uses both might find the service even more intriguing. I'm also curious to see if TweetDeck would make any sense in an interface like the iPhone. With Twitterific debuting on the iPhone and iPod Touch on day one, it will be hard for competitors to make headway, especially those that use the AIR platform.

TweetDeck is in public beta, and can be found here: http://tweetdeck.com/beta/. Other reviews so far of TweetDeck include those from ReadWriteWeb, /Message and The Download Squad.

TweetDeck: New Twitter AIR App With Summize Integration, Groups

For many, given the up and down status of Twitter, the search functionality of Summize has become a must-have to find conversations, replies, and topics. A new AIR app, debuting today, called TweetDeck, features full integration with Summize, and lets you customize your Twitter experience, through dedicated columns for your feed, your replies, searches, and even the ability to create custom groups of those you follow on Twitter for a micro-feed.

Authored by Iain Dodsworth, TweetDeck (available here), could give other AIR options, like Twhirl and Feedalizer some new competition. While I'm not typically a huge fan of AIR apps, I found TweetDeck to offer a great number of customizations that have me keeping it open and on the desktop around the clock.


The TweetDeck Interface (Click for Larger Image)
TweetDeck offers four major columns in which to organize Twitter data: "All Tweets", essentially your friends' timeline, "Replies", showing replies to you, the equivalent of Twitter's replies tab, "Search", which will keep a running search window open for a term you've selected, and "Group", which lets you make a sub-set of those you follow on Twitter, and make a miniature timeline.

Unlike some applications, whose preferred mode is single column, getting me only my Twitter stream, TweetDeck is actually very well built for being used in full-screen mode, of course, running in the background. Now, with one glance, I can see all updates, see all replies, and keep my eye out for keywords. And rather than force me to go out to Summize to search a keyword, TweetDeck has integrated Summize's search capability and also its ability to find replies, although, in version 0.15 beta, released just this morning, Twitter replies now have precedence, should there be duplicates.

You can also, of course, post your own Tweets from within the app, just by hitting the "Tweet" button at the top and entering what you want to say. TweetDeck counts down the number of characters to make sure you don't exceed 140.

The recent strain at Twitter has resulted in the service reducing the number of API calls developers can make to get Twitter updates, and there, TweetDeck has you covered as well, so you learn if there's any slowness, where to lay the blame.

In the bottom right corner, TweetDeck reports: "Twitter Status: Pretty much ok" or "Twitter Status: Rate limit exceeded" when there's a problem. It also provides a status as to when it was last updated, how many tweets were received, and when the next update is expected, polling every couple minutes.

In addition to the integrated search functionality, I was most impressed by the grouping function. I was able to create a group called "Lady Digerati", and could hand-pick which Tweeters would be followed, including @corvida, @sarahintampa, @veronica, @TheMacMommy, @NicoleSimon and others. You could, of course, make your own sub-groups to get a different subset.

While Jesse Stay and others have said Twitter's major issues have decimated the developer community's efforts around Twitter, there are still some looking to innovate, TweetDeck being a good example. Of course, given it's early status, there might be some issues, but it's worth taking a look, as the application has some great potential.