Most users of Twitter will likely access Twitter for their first tweet using a simple web client (i.e by going to www.twitter.com, creating a user account, and then posting (Twitting) via the web page. This is perhaps the simplest and most common way to post to Twitter, however, many users quickly find that they want to enhance their twitter experience and become more productive, thus the need for third party Twitter clients. For developers, Twitter provides an open API enabling you to develop add-on applications that interact with twitter – see http://apiwiki.twitter.com/
Locating a Twitter client is no small task as there are likely hundreds of options available to the user. The Twitter user can select one or many clients to use, typically determined by the operating system being used – many popular clients exist for PC, Mac, and mobile users (we’ll focus on the PC user in this example). Perhaps the fastest way to get an idea what clients are available for use is to see what other are using. If you look at a Twitter post from anyone you will notice that below the actual tweet there is always a final line (differentiated by smaller, gray text) revealing the time the tweet was made (i.e 20 minutes ago) and how it was posted or via which client( i.e “from web” or “from Tweetie”). The disclaimer “from Tweetie” tells you that the author created and posted his/her Tweet using the iPhone Twitter client, Tweetie. Something that is very useful is that the client is hyperlinked to a page where more information about that application can be found.
[Read more…] about Social “How To” – 5 Must Consider Twitter Clients For The Desktop