moTweets Review

MoTweets – Panoramic Software

I always like to use generic software whenever possible. So, when I switched over to WP7 from the iPhone, I started using the official Twitter app. It soon left me very frustrated because I couldn’t find a way to “Reply to all”, which I need quite often. I started to look around for other apps, and that’s when I discovered moTweets.

What a great find it is. It boasts some features that I haven’t seen in the various other Twitter apps I’ve used on WP7 or iOS.

The default display lists your timeline with a scrollable menu along the top that gives you 5 options, and 4 icons along the bottom, tapping the screen to the bottom right offers even more options.

The bottom 4 icons are ‘post’, a ‘quick menu’ list that replicates the scrollable list along the top, a ‘refresh icon’ and a ‘streams’ icon that lists your own feeds or trends.

Your scrollable list along the top has ‘timeline’, ‘mentions’, and ‘inbox’ for any direct messages, ‘near me’, which is a great option. Selecting this displays tweets by people or businesses near your current location whether or not they are in your followers list. The last one is ‘image wall’ and this displays all the images that people have posted in your recent timeline, again a really good addition.

You can set up to 6 Twitter or Facebook accounts and have them displayed in the same timeline or split them by creating separate streams.

Tapping a tweet from any of the screens gives you a quick menu that can take you to that persons home page (and even displays the Twitter background they have set at Twitter.com), a URL, or trend. You can reply, reply all, private msg, retweet, quote tweet or add to your favourites list. Holding your finger down on a tweet will bring that tweet up to full screen. Another nice feature is if you click on the world icon on the bottom it will zoom you into that persons location (providing they have enabled location tracking).

The app gives you plenty of customizable options, 3 different skins, font size, quick button options, and the ability to setup the various picture and url services.

This is what the official twitter app should have been, you can download the free version (ad supported) or pay £1.49. It does have the occasional issue with reloading a screen, but going back to the Home screen and relaunching the app sorts it out pretty quickly,  it’s definitely the best twitter app I have used on any device.