STOP TRYING TO MANAGE YOUR TIME. START CRAFTING IT.

In my last installment of the Decluttering iStuff series, I purged all but two of my third-party camera apps from my iPhone. This time around, I have the more daunting task of eliminating a ton of Twitter apps from both my iPhone and iPad.
I suppose that some of the apps I’m eliminating don’t just “do Twitter”, but they also tackle several other social networks. But since I am more active on Twitter than any other network, I’m looking at how each of them deals with that network — the other networks have little to no bearing on what apps stay and what apps go.

Let’s get started, shall we?

I had the following Twitter apps on my iOS devices when I started the decluttering process:

• TweetDeck
• HootSuite
• Tweetbot
• Boxcar
• Twitter (the “official” app)
• Birdhouse

The goal, as usual, is to whittle my options down to a main app and a backup app for each platform.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a favourite among many power users, and its most recent iteration is far and away the best they’ve come up with to date. With Twitter owning TweetDeck, I can only expect that they will continue to offer the app (which also comes in a web and desktop version) for those users that need to manage their Twitter presences with such a robust tool, while basic users can simply download the official Twitter app for bare bones tweeting.

Even though TweetDeck is the most ubiquitous of the apps I’ve got, I’m not a fan of Adobe Air (which is the foundation that TweetDeck has to have in place to run on one’s desktop natively), and the app itself just seems too “busy” for my tastes. I know a lot of people swear by it, but TweetDeck isn’t making the cut on either of my iOS devices — or on my Mac at home for that matter.

HootSuite

HootSuite may also look similarly “busy” to others, but I think because it’s an app I’ve used from the get-go that it doesn’t seem that way to me. HootSuite handles a ton of social networks and is free in its most basic use cases. I pay for a premium account, which gives me more tools than the average user may need, but that’s because it really has become my main Twitter app across all platforms.

But it’s not going to be on my iPhone.

There’s just too much to display for it to work for me in that environment. On the iPad it works fantastically for me, but the iPhone app just seems too crowded. So while HootSuite gets the call on my MacBook Pro and on my iPad, it has been turfed from my iPhone in favour of…

Tweetbot

This is what a user experience on the iPhone should be like. Tweetbot is fast, intuitive, and gorgeous to look at. It is the best Twitter app available for the iPhone, bar none.

But it’s not going to be on my iPad.

It just doesn’t “feel” like an iPad app. Tweetbot is too portable. It is designed for a smaller profile, and that’s why it works on the iPhone so well. It gets used more than any other Twitter app on any of my iOS devices, so that just shows you what device I generally use to tweet.

Tweetbot isn’t free, but putting it on your iPhone as your main Twitter app is a truly freeing experience.

Boxcar

I grabbed Boxcar because it was able to handle a ton of stuff, all in one app. But as time passed by, I turned off its notifications and steered clear of it because of the very reason I obtained it. It was just too much.

I get what the app is trying to do, and for what it is trying to do it deserves merit points. But all it did in the end for me was make social network updates a trying experience. Happy trails, Boxcar.

Twitter (The Offical App)

It’s pretty. It’s functional. It’s free. It does Twitter well.

But when Twitter tried to make life difficult for third-party developers recently with changes to its authorization methodology, I was a little disturbed. I viewed it as a monopolistic move on their part.

I moved their “official” app off of my iPhone as a result. But I need a reliable backup app on my iPad, so it stays put on said device. For now.¹

Birdhouse

I don’t always what to tweet something when I think of it. I also don’t necessarily want to schedule it. Birdhouse is my answer to this.

Rather than use HootSuite to save drafts and schedule my tweets from my iPhone, Birdhouse lets me create a tweet, save it and then publish it whenever I choose. It’s a simple app that fills a specific need for me…and it is ideally suited for the iPhone. It may not reside on my iPad, but it has found a place on my iPhone for the foreseeable future.

In the end, here’s what Twitter apps made the cut and each iOS device I own:

iPad

1. HootSuite
2. Twitter official app

iPhone

1. Tweetbot
2. Birdhouse

^{1 That is my veiled way of asking for replacement app suggestions…}