Six weeks ago, ReadWriteWeb published their definitive list of the top Twitter clients. The methodology for that list was watching the Twitter public feed and logging tweet sources. However, how does the list of clients people are using match up the list of the ones people are talking about? Using data from blog search engine Twingly, we decided to see which Twitter clients are getting the most buzz on blogs. The result is a list of the most popular 3rd-party Twitter-apps according to the blogosphere.
This is a guest post from Anton Johansson, a business developer at the Swedish startup Twingly.com, which developing a spam-free blog search engine focused on Europe.
ReadWriteWeb's public feed study in April also found Twhirl to be the most popular Twitter client. It was helped in the blogosphere by all the buzz created by its acqusition by Seesmic last month. [Incidentally, that also drove a lot of traffic to our Twitter clients list post as well. -- Ed.]
The top two desktop apps -- Twhirl and Twitterific -- are again the same ones ReadWriteWeb saw last month in their study. But after that, things deviate a bit. Snitter, Tweetr, and Twitteroo were all farther down the list in terms of usage, but are getting a disproportionate amount of coverage in the blogosphere.
Launched just a few weeks ago, Twistori (RWW coverage) has already garnered a lot of attention. Interestingly, Twistori actually uses data from Summize, one of the more popular Twitter search engines -- and clearly one of the most talked about, as well.
There have been far fewer blog posts written about mobile Twitter applications in relation to other categories. Hahlo, the first iPhone and iPod Touch client for Twitter takes first place in terms of buzz, followed by Cetwit, a popular app for Windows Mobile. Twittai is a Java-based Twitter cell phone application.
We used the the list of Twitter apps on the Twitter Fan Wiki as our source of applications to watch for. The list contains 209 Twitter apps, most of which have not been linked to from the blogosphere at all.
LoudTwitter, an app that publishes tweets to blogs, was excluded because most of its links came from link backs included when the service pushes tweets to blog posts. They didn't get many mentions in posts specifically about them, but their autolinks generated a ton of links within the blogosphere.
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Thank you for this very great and useful list. :)
Posted by: pickupjojo | May 16, 2008 11:27 AM
I shall checkout the mobile ones because I am not a fan of twitter mobile and twitter non mobile is still not great with opera.
suprised tweetscan wasn't on the list and I would of liked crowdstatus on there :p
Posted by: Darren | May 16, 2008 11:32 AM
Not on the list and rapidly becoming my favorite is Favrd:
http://textism.com/favrd/
Interesting in that there seems to be a little satire in the "secret no-webcock algorithm" parsing the Tweets ( Making fun of Google? ).
Posted by: Todd | May 16, 2008 11:55 AM
Great job on putting together this list. I have been compiling a list as well. Check out this published last month: http://ekive.blogspot.com/2008/04/twitter-twit-twit-here-and-tweet-tweet.html
and an update posted a couple of days ago:
http://ekive.blogspot.com/2008/05/twittering-more-ways.html
Posted by: Mark Scrimshire | May 16, 2008 12:48 PM
I've blog new Twitter apps at http://twitterapps.co.uk/ 227 so far.
Posted by: infobunny | May 16, 2008 12:51 PM
This is kind of funny, I was checking out Twingly, the spam-free blog search engine focused on Europe, lol, and two of the links on the homepage are spam blogs that repost sites like ReadWriteWeb RSS feeds, with ReadWriteWeb in between the two links. Spam free indeed.
Posted by: Jimmy Daniels | May 16, 2008 1:25 PM
Thanks people!
@Jimmy Daniels, the widget (which is the same one that our newspaper-partners use, http://beta.twingly.com/partners )is not synchronized with our spam-free search index. But hopefully in the future!
Request an invite, or send an email to anton at twingly dot com, and you'll see how it works :)
Regards,
Anton Johansson, Twingly.com
Posted by: Anton | May 16, 2008 1:39 PM
Great! Thanks blogosphere ;)
Mobypicture is at the brink of a relaunch. Upgrading the user interface dramatically and adding many platforms and video and audio. So this is just the beginning.
Shoot 'n share!
Posted by: Mathijs | May 16, 2008 1:48 PM
If I could I would leave a video comment here! Thanks for the great news that Twhirl is #1 !
Posted by: Loic | May 16, 2008 2:49 PM
It´s not in the top 5 mobile apps, but still is very popular and works on almost any phone:
http://www.cellity.com/en/info/tweeter.html
Posted by: Sarik | May 16, 2008 3:07 PM
Well, since Terraminds was down for over 1 month (it appears to be back on now, but for how long?!), still ranking it in this list may be an overstatement.
Tweetscan has quickly assumed the mantle of the default Twitter search app, improving back-data availability (looks like to Nov '07) and other search query features/caching (in order to handle the newly arriving loads when Terraminds went down).
Terraminds really blew this one, then again, apparently it was just one guy from Germany.
Twitter should by now really have ramped up their own native search capabilities, e.g. by buying the TM guy out. They barely got their own "people" search fixed recently (it was broken for months not showing newly added users). I hope Google buys them soon to put things on a solid footing.
Posted by: Alex Schleber | May 16, 2008 5:04 PM
I add the conversational Twitter tool Quotably https://quotably.com/
Posted by: Scabr | May 16, 2008 10:00 PM
Sorry, but I got to say this article is total fluff (and little more than an ad to boot... I kind of hope RWW charged Twingly.com to publish this).
My main issue is the methodology is not at all clear. "Using data from blog search engine Twingly, we decided to see which Twitter clients are getting the most buzz on blogs." Over a specific time period? Can an app simply be mentioned? must it be linked link? do deep links cound? do comments count? etc, etc, etc.
Additionally, the title is misleading. It should be "The Most Popular Twitter Apps According to some guy promoting Twingly.com".
Posted by: Ben Tucker | May 16, 2008 11:00 PM
Ben Tucker, thanks for the response.
The methodology for making this toplist is mostly based on how many inlinks the app have from the blogosphere. That's the easiest and best way according to us for getting a high relevant result.
Please feel free to send an email to anton at twingly dot com if you're interested of more info or wondering something else.
Kind regards,
Anton Johansson, Twingly.com
Posted by: Anton | May 17, 2008 1:24 AM
Interesting, well I would think twitterific would be #1.
Posted by: Television Twitterer | May 17, 2008 2:48 AM
I'am agree with #13. Twingly is the blogosphere? :-)
Posted by: Dario Salvelli | May 17, 2008 2:51 PM
Dam... I wish we had added AlertThingy to that list to see how we stacked-up.
Posted by: Jeremy Baines | May 17, 2008 3:09 PM
Newcomer www.tweetwire.com is a news aggregate more than an app, but a daily read for me and neat concept...
Posted by: Dawn C | May 17, 2008 7:47 PM
Don't forget Twittermail.com!
Works very well and becomes more popular every day...
Posted by: Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten | May 18, 2008 11:57 AM
Thanks. I'm going to check out those apps.
Posted by: Henry Pena | May 19, 2008 10:25 AM
Glad to see twhirl up at number one, and looking forward to next iphone2 so I can start tinkering with Hahlo.
I set up www.twitterfund.com yesterday - partly to see if Twitter's fan community would dip it's hand in a pocket to help (and yes, I do know about the $15M) - would appreciate any thoughts/donations.
Keep up the fine work RRW!
Chris
Posted by: Chris Reed | June 6, 2008 1:30 PM