Le Meur told us that a native Windows client was something that Seesmic's users had been requesting for quite a while. The Seesmic team worked on this new client for the last few months, though the company managed to keep this development under wraps and today's release comes as a surprise. While there are quite a few good native Twitter clients for OSX, the most popular Twitter clients on Windows are currently AIR apps.

Features

Being a native client, Seesmic can now also make use of some of Windows' built-in features like a system-wide spellchecker or Windows 7's location services. While Twitter hasn't launched it's location API yet, Seesmic will now be able to tab into this data quickly.

The new client will also allow users to drag and drop their friends' avatars into user lists.

Just like the current beta version of its AIR app, Seesmic for Windows will support Twitter's userlists and while the look and feel is similar to the AIR app, the Windows client also features vertical tabs in the sidebar that allow users to quickly switch between different views (all, accounts, userlists and searches).

Plugins for Seesmic

For developers, of course, the new plugin infrastructure also means that they can now offer their services directly in a Twitter client. The current version already showcases plugins from TweetMeme and MrTweet. According to Le Meur, this will also allow other Twitter-like services to build their own plugins and build their own columns in Seesmic without having to establish a formal relationship with the company. In a few weeks, Seesmic will launch a plugin gallery to showcase these extensions.

What About the AIR App?

Seesmic will continue to develop its Adobe AIR client for the time being, though chances are that the company is also looking at developing a native Mac client.

Here are the latest tools and services we've come to love, maybe you'd like to give them a try too.

Think you find a lot of great stuff online? You should try sharing it with people using Posterous. The user experience for this curation and blogging tool is remarkable, a real model for other app makers to check out. Posting by email, iPhone and a web bookmarklet are all really easy. My Posterous is here and Frederic Lardinois shares some of this favorite stuff here. If you like what we write about on ReadWriteWeb then check out the cool little things we find but don't blog about at the day job - or the things that will make it to ReadWriteWeb later. Posterous just went real time this week, too.

See also: How to Use Tumblr, Posterous and Other Light Blogging Services

Topify

Ever feel frustrated by the emails you get from Twitter? We did, until we signed up for Topify. From really smart "X is now following you" emails to the ability to reply to direct messages by email - Topify delivers Twitter emails like Twitter ought to. It's another project from Ouriel Ohayon, who's also behind the wonderful iPhone app sharing service AppsFire. Ouriel makes cool stuff.

See also: Ten Companies Twitter Should Consider Acquiring Next

Seesmic Web

The never-ending battle between Seesmic and Tweetdeck to see who can make the coolest Twitter client is great for users. Tweetdeck ate my groups last night in an upgrade, after I'd spent hours building them, and so I decided to give Seesmic another try. The Seesmic Web app is awesome and Mac users can turn it into its own app on the desktop using Fluid. The best of many cool features? List support! You can turn any list you're following on Twitter into its own column in Seesmic. Frederic Lardinois says he's been using this combo for a few weeks, I still have some kinks to work out.

See also: Seesmic + Twhirl is a Vision of the Web's Future (From 18 months ago, how did our prediction turn out?)

Tweetie 2

The iPhone app Tweetie (iTunes link) made a major upgrade last month and we're loving it. Sarah Perez put this one on the list but everyone agrees - this is hot stuff. Will the forthcoming Seesmic Mobile app be as good? Will Tweetdeck's eventual support for Twitter lists turn into an awesome iPhone app? We'll see - but Tweetie's many rich features make it the app to beat right now. My favorite feature? The way the replies page can be pulled down like a spring to prompt a refresh. It's a little thing, but it's fun.

See also: The Favorite iPhone Apps of Five Geek Rock Stars

Aardvark

Aardvark leverages what it calls "the real-time web of people" to deliver answers to any question you have - from people in your social circle who know about the topic and are available at that very moment. Vark gets mixed reviews from some people, but I love it. From technical questions to practical ones about life to opinions about questions I have at work - I've been getting a lot of fast, helpful information from people on Aardvark lately. It's another app that scores very high on User Experience, especially in its iPhone and IM interfaces.

See also: The Robot Made Me Do It: Comparing 3 New Cyborg Q&A Services

Chrome/Chromium

Google's web browser is fast, it's really fast. It's hard to say goodbye to all the wonderful Firefox extensions we've been using for years - but it's harder to use any other browser once you've been using Chrome for awhile. We have high hopes for Chrome plug-ins, but even without them it's a joy to use. You can download Chrome for Windows here and Chromium for Mac here.

LazyFeed

LazyFeed is a topic-driven "discovery engine." It's basically a blog search client that brings in the freshest posts about topics you're interested in. A couple of months into using it, I'm still finding great content every time I fire it up. I've got this running in Fluid and it works great.

Want some serendipity on the iPhone? Try out competitor YourVersion's app. The first version isn't easy on the eyes, but it delivers roughly the same experience on the go.

See also: Ten Useful Examples of the Real-Time Web in Action

Those are some of our favorites lately. What apps have you fallen in love with this season? We'd love to know.

See also our previous installments in this series:
30 Days Later: 22 Apps We're Still Using One Month After Finding Them From one year ago!
Still Shiny: 23 Apps We're Using One Month Later From this Spring.
What We Use: A Tour of RWW Desktops (Mac & PC) Video screencasts.

In Seesmic's web interface, users can now simply hover their cursor over profile pictures and a menu will appear. This menu, among other things, allows Seesmic's users to add others to lists. One nice aspect of the web interface is that it auto-updates lists when new tweets come in. The desktop app - at least in the current version - doesn't do this and forces users to manually refresh lists to see updates.

Geolocation

In addition to supporting lists, the new version of the web client also supports Twitter's geolocation API. Seesmic users can't share their locations, but whenever a Twitter user broadcasts location data, a little pin will appear underneath the profile picture, and hovering over this pin will bring up a map. Only a few users actually have the ability to broadcast their locations at this point. Twitter is only giving platform developers access to this feature for now, but it should soon become a standard feature in mobile clients like Tweetie 2 and Twitterrific.

In the desktop client, Seesmic integrates lists in its sidebar. To add a list to the deck, you just click on the name of the list. Using these userlists is just as easy as creating a persistent search in Seesmic. Seesmic has also added the option to add users to a list right from the desktop.

This is still an early build and some features are still missing. Seesmic's CEO and founder Loïc le Meur told us that Seesmic's users had been asking for basic lists support and that the company wanted to get this feature into its users' hands as soon as possible. Because of this, some features haven't been implemented yet.

In the build we tested, we couldn't create new lists, for example. For now, list columns also don't update themselves. Instead, users will have to reload them manually. As le Meur told us, users would quickly hit their API limits on Twitter if the lists auto-updated. The company is working with Twitter to find a better solution. For now, the lack of auto-updating lists is an annoyance, but not a deal-breaker.

Le Meur stressed that this was still a preview version and that the company plans to ship more comprehensive support for lists in the final build.

Coming Later Today

If you want to give it a try, just sign up for Team Seesmic and you'll be notified when the new build arrives.

A new class of tools intended to surface influencers and the people they are influenced by are focusing on a hub of rapid, connected conversation that's wide open for analysis - Twitter. Could analysis of individual behavior on Twitter become a valuable tool for business development and marketing? A growing number of startup companies are making a case that it could.

On the margins of the developing Twitter-as-business tool ecosystem are startups building light-weight influencer discovery and analysis tools. Two of the most interesting yet have launched in the last 24 hours, in fact.

Shining a Light on Webs of Connection

Still one of the most useful tools in this group, if still largely a proof of concept, is Pete Warden's Mailana. Give Mailana a Twitter username and it will tell you who the top 20 people that user has had reciprocal public conversations with on Twitter - who they are engaging with the most. Want to get into the world of Lewis Shepherd, CTO of Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments? (It's his birthday today, by the way.) Then you might consider joining CTOvision.com author Bob Gourley, Purdue University Cyber War Researcher Samuel Liles and Dr. Mark Drapeau in conversation on Twitter. That's who Shepherd communicates with the most there, according to Mailana.

Friendship Discovery As a Service

It may be a sign of market maturation that some companies are now offering APIs for this kind of functionality and others are integrating it into their core products. Yesterday social media aggregator Seesmic integrated into its web application a feature from Twitter recommendation service Mr.Tweet that surfaces what other users or anyone "pays the most attention to" on Twitter. This is really useful - you can discover key people for any influencer you follow with just a few clicks. Did you know that local-blogging guru Lisa Williams is a very close contact of media consultant Amy Gahran? I did because I've been following them both for years - but now you can discover that connection programmatically, with a click.

Performance of the new feature integration is spotty and the user experience leaves a lot to be desired - but it's only been out for 24 hours.

The platform is wide open for analysis and exposing a person's "social graph" is wildly valuable for discovery, context, relationship building and more. There's going to be a whole lot more development in this direction.

Influencer Discovery For Sale

Will people pay for this kind of information? If they are smart they will. Popular Twitter shared link tracking service Tweetmeme released its first paid product this morning and is betting it can monetize influencer discovery.

The new Tweetmeme Analytics service does a number of things, but the most useful feature may be what it calls "retweet trees." Publishers can surface the chain of retweets that passed their links around and see which Twitter users had the biggest impact on a chain of retweets.

Tweetmeme is surfacing other types of data as well and there's potential for that data to be organized, cross referenced and displayed in a wide variety of ways. Tweetmeme is already performing text analysis of the pages being shared on Twitter, so content type could become another axis point to look at the data around.

All of these services are in early days. If people will in fact pay for them, then they will develop all the more. It's a greenfield of possible added value. Finding out who is of interest to people of interest to you is a classic business activity, open social networking like Twitter makes that possible in newly interesting and efficient ways.

Facebook Pages

Overall, the focus in this new version is clearly on enhancing Seesmic's Facebook functionality. While most users probably don't administer Facebook pages, the ability to see select Facebook Pages in Seesmic turns out to be quite useful. From within those columns, you can post comments and like posts. This new feature now also makes it easier for users to cross-post to their Twitter accounts, Facebook profiles, and Facebook Pages.

Twitter Updates: Reply to All, Favorites

On the Twitter side of Seesmic Desktop, the 'reply to all' feature is probably the most useful new addition. While this isn't a new feature (TweetDeck has had it for a while), it's still quite useful, especially when you want to reply to re-tweeted messages that include more than one username.

In addition, Seemsic Desktop now also features a column for 'favorites.' Favorites remain a relatively under-utilized feature on Twitter, so chances are that not a lot of Seesmic users will actually really use of this feature.

I've been testing the new TweetDeck for about half a day and below are the five things I like the best about it and the three things I like the least.

The Good News

Bring Your MySpace Friendships Back From the Dead, Without Visiting MySpace

Many people don't like visiting MySpace anymore, but let's admit it: unless you're a total snob, you probably still have some friends that are still active there. It's nice to know how they're doing. The new TweetDeck makes that easy. Just grant TweetDeck permission to access your list of friends and their updates will appear in one or more columns. It's downright heartwarming.

The Facebook Integration is Very Good

If you like to use Facebook, TweetDeck isn't going to replace the user experience for you, but it's an excellent supplemental view of your friends' activity streams. You get the whole hog - photos, comments, likes, liking and commenting. You can even send posts to Facebook just by clicking to select or deselect that account in the update composing window. The new TweetDeck makes it easy to post messages and photos to multiple or different accounts. It's remarkably easy - it's fantastic.

Also very nice is the ability to create TweetDeck groups from your Facebook friends. You can even create multiple columns in TweetDeck displaying updates from different groups of your Facebook friends, and group creation is now super smooth in Tweetdeck with name autocompletion when you start typing. Groups are the secret weapon of the social web and they are the key to Tweetdeck's value. Unfortunately you can't import the groups you've already created in Facebook, but more on that later.

Links Shortened Automatically

Type or paste a link into the posting box on TweetDeck and it's now automatically shortened. It's fast and easy, a real time saver.

Drag and Drop Photos Works Well, Even With Skitch

Drag photos in to share them by URL, even out of the Mac screen capture service Skitch. Expect a lot more image sharing via TweetDeck. You can even post those images over to Facebook. You can't send images to MySpace, which is a bummer.

The Directory Has Potential

There's a new TweetDeck Directory that's linked-to from the client where you can find groups of users organized by topic and follow them in a new column with just a click. That's very cool. There are really diverse groups, but they aren't that deep in the accounts included. Using a service like Twellow or Tweepz is still a better way to create your own groups - but this isn't bad for new users and it certainly has potential. (We're holding our breath for the ultimate Twitter group app, another one that's currently awaiting approval from Twitter but that we hope to get to write about soon.)

The Bad News

It's not all kisses from kittens with this new TweetDeck. Here are three things that are a disappointment above and beyond the fact that this is still the most memory-intensive software I have running on my computer right now.

Facebook Groups Can't Be Imported

It's probably not TweetDeck's fault at all but those groups you created in Facebook? You're going to have to build them all over again here if you want to use them. There's nothing like creating separate views for people you knew in highschool on one hand and geeks you know from the internet on the other. The inability to port those groups over makes Facebook reading in TweetDeck a lot more clumsy than it ought to be. Dear Facebook, would you please make sure this is easy to do?

MySpace May Take Up Two Columns

Syncing a MySpace account requires that you put either activity stream or status updates in a column. If you want to see what your friends are both doing and saying, then you have to give up two columns. That's obnoxious, but again probably not TweetDeck's fault. I'm just saying: this is a social network activity stream browser now and there are some issues.

There's Still No Group Export

TweetDeck remains in control over the work you've created in building groups in its client. This is TweetDeck's fault. The company hasn't made any visible progress in data portability. When thousands of friend connections are flying all around, group creation adds huge value. By not facilitating the porting of those groups to and from other clients, TweetDeck (as well as Seesmic) are effectively locking their users in. It's bad.

Those issues aside, this is a major update for the better. The pace of innovation in TweetDeck is really impressive. I look forward to using this software all day, every day, for the next few months until yet another version comes out that's even better. How does it look to you? Hopefully within the next few hours you'll be able to give the new TweetDeck a try and let us know.

Note: This story was embargoed until 10am Pacific, but as usual, the app still hasn't gone live in the store. This is becoming standard procedure these days and Apple is doing a disservice to both the developers and the press by not giving developers a clearer idea about when a new application will actually appear in the store.

Update (5:30pm): the app is now available in the App Store.

Earlier this year, 12seconds announced tighter integration with Twitter and this app clearly shows this. Once you have uploaded your video, a message will be posted to your Twitter feed.

One nice aspect of the app is that it is extremely easy to use. You just tilt the iPhone sideways and the recorder automatically opens. After recording a video, you can play it, retake it, or delete it.

In a future update, 12seconds also plans to integrate Facebook Connect. This will give users the ability to share video on both Twitter and Facebook. The company also plans to release a few more iPhone 3GS apps in the near future.

A number of other Twitter video services like TwitVid already offer iPhone apps (iTunes link). 12seconds, however, is one of the largest players in this space - especially now that Seesmic has decided to shift its focus away from its video service.

Currently, conversations on Twitter are asynchronous and sluggish. If they happened in real-time, however, Twitter would start to look and feel more like an IM client. Even on FriendFeed, which was once seen as a possible Twitter challenger but which never quite got any mainstream traction, conversations now happen in real time. While Twitter is often mentioned as a vehicle for real-time conversations, in reality, conversations on Twitter aren't happening in real time at all.

Once Twitter turns into more of a chatroom, both Twitter's website and third-party clients will also have to improve the way they display these conversations. Seesmic's 'message' view looks like a step in the right direction. The Seesmic web app features a TweetDeck-like column-based view of your Twitter streams and searches, but it also separates 'real' conversations that you participate in from the rest of the application. Other desktop apps like Nambu for the Mac feature rudimentary support for displaying conversation threads, but most clients currently don't do a very good job at highlighting conversations and mostly look at Twitter as a broadcast medium.

Once our streams really start moving on Twitter, we will also need better ways to filter and manage our subscriptions (including better spam filters). Right now, scanning a list of updates is easy, and most clients support search and the ability to create groups, but maybe automatic filtering based on the kind of messages we pay attention to will also help us to manage the information stream.

What Do You Think?

We will have to see how all of this will play out in the next few months once Seesmic (and others, we assume) will release their updated clients, but we think that this could potentially take Twitter into a completely new direction.

Maybe the niftiest feature of the Seesmic web app is its new messages view. Here, you can overview of all your private DM's, which are then displayed like IM conversations. If you open up multiple conversations, they will appear in separate columns, making it easy to keep track of more than one discussion at a time. For now, this view only works for direct messages, but it would also be great if Seesmic expanded this for @replies as well.

One feature we really liked, and one that we hope more desktop apps will recreate (including the Seesmic Desktop), is Seesmic's ability to sync persistent searches back and forth with your Twitter profile on Twitter's own site. Whenever you add a search on Twitter, it will appear in Seesmic and vice versa.

There are quite a few other features we like a lot about the Seesmic web app:

• you can shuffle columns around by simply dragging and dropping them
• the one-column, Gmail-style view, which is somewhat reminiscent of similar views in Eventbox and Nambu, should work great for users on netbooks and other devices with limited screen estate
• in-line replies work very well in the Gmail-style view
• every column can be set to show a traditional view of your stream (with avatars etc.) or it can be set to show a Gmail-style, one-column UI view
• when you mouse over a user's avatar, you can easily send them a direct message, follow the user (or unfollow), and bring up a user's profile

There are a few things, though, that are still missing from the app, including support for multiple accounts and groups, for example. Loic Le Meur, Seesmic's founder and CEO, however, told us that support for both of these will arrive soon. As Loic told us, Seesmic plans to launch simple and then iterate very fast after launch.

For now, you are also restricted to using bit.ly as your URL shortener, though we assume that other URL shorteners will become available in the near future as well.

Real-Time Updates Coming Soon

There are currently no settings for managing how often Seesmic polls Twitter but according to Loic, Seesmic's polling automatically adapts to Twitter's API limits for now. In the near future, however, Loic tells us, polling will not be an issue anymore. We are not quite sure how exactly this is going to work, but once we can get away from polling and Twitter's API limits, using Twitter will definitely start to feel more like an IM app than SMS.

Competition for the Web App?

The competition for the Seesmic web app that immediately comes to mind is obviously Peoplebrowsr. Peoplebrowsr, after all, also provides a column-based Twitter client (among many other things). Overall, however, while Peoplebrowsr has more features, it also feels a bit cluttered, while Seesmic's designers have basically recreated the desktop app's layout, which provides a comparably tranquil environment that focuses on the most important features.

Sobees also just released a Silverlight-based Twitter app that runs in the browser just before this post went live. We did not have a chance to try it out yet, but Allen Stern seems to like it, and its built-in anti-spam features look quite useful as well.

What About Seesmic Desktop?

Obviously, the big announcement today is the Seesmic web application, but the Seesmic Desktop also got a major update and is now at version 0.4.

Here are the most important new features:

• single column and multi-column mode: you can now choose between a Twhirl-like, traditional Twitter client view with a single column, and you have the option to detach all columns
• collapse and expand the sidebar: great if you want to save some screen estate
• support for MobyPicture
• better control over the width of columns
• a new search column now appears when you click on a hashtag

There are also a number of smaller updates, but for us, what stood out were the new views, including the more Tweetdeck-like detached column view and the single column view, which makes it easier to keep track of your Twitter feed at the corner of your screen.

Twitter has acquired two other companies so far, that we know of. Search engine and sentiment analysis service Summize became Twitter's own search engine and Values of N sold its assets so engineer Rael Dornfest could be brought into the company. Here are ten other startups we think that Twitter should consider acquiring next. Which kind of company would you most like to see become part of Twitter itself? We've got a poll below.

Some of these we think are likely acquisitions, some less so. In making this list we considered both functionality that would be helpful to have added to Twitter's own site and technology that would be worth buying instead of just building in-house. Whenever a platform company builds technology that a number of other startups offer, there is a risk of scaring other people away from investing in development that the platform could just reproduce. Acquisitions of startups on a platform probably increase the appeal of development though, as it's a chance to get in on the game.

Quite Likely, if It Hasn't Happened Already

Bit.ly is the most full-featured and popular URL shortener on the market right now and was recently selected as Twitter's own shortener of choice, dethroning TinyURL. Bit.ly offers all kinds of smart analytics, from real-time click tracking to semantic analysis of topic keywords from the links that people tweet.

One trusted industry source speaking on the condition of anonymity told us that Bit.ly servers "were moved into Twitter's racks months ago in preparation for this change" [of becoming the default shortener]. Bit.ly is becoming too important to Twitter to keep that functionality outside the company's own shop and the two companies share some investors. We will not be surprised at all if a Bit.ly acquisition by Twitter is announced sometime in the near future.

Could Happen...

Tweetmeme is another fast growing Twitter analytics service that tracks sharing on the service. With another chunk of new features just added today, the service is looking a whole lot like "Feedburner for Twitter" but with even more viral distribution possibilities. The Tweetmeme API is quite interesting and could complement Bit.ly quite well.

Twitpic is a popular way to share images on Twitter. The site faces a strong challenge from ImageShack's YFrog, but independent Twitpic would be a cheaper acquisition and is already well known among Twitter users. (Twitter should probably look at Enjoysthin.gs; it's got the best user experience.) An increase in imagery on Twitter would probably offer the company a lot more advertising real-estate.

Tweepz is a fascinating Twitter search engine that acts like a directory that lets you parse your results using various metrics gleaned from Twitter. Check out this search, for example. Twitter could benefit from making this kind of search available to users, advertisers and researchers - and Tweepz has already built it. See also Twazzup, another company doing interesting things with Twitter data.

Longer Shots

An iPhone app company could be a good buy for Twitter; there's certainly plenty of options. M.Twitter.com is a good mobile service already but someone specializing in super high-quality Twitter apps for the iPhone, Android and Pre could be good to bring in house. It could be AteBits, makers of Tweetie. There may not be enough reason for Twitter to buy one of these companies, though.

A desktop Twitter app company could help Twitter increase user engagement. Many of the most serious Twitter users (though not all) swear by desktop access. Twitter could acquire the most popular and arguably most innovative desktop app, Tweetdeck, or it could bring Seesmic in house. Tweetdeck would be cheap and shares investors with Twitter. Desktop apps may be too limited in appeal to be a compelling acquisition target.

Geo-location could be a good feature to add to Twitter. Search by user location could be made much more meaningful and the list of things that could be done with it is very long. Brightkite is popular and well developed, Shizzow is pretty and wouldn't be expensive. On the other hand, browsers themselves will likely all become more location aware in the near future and Twitter may be satisfied with its current location data.

A semantics company could bring structure to the Tweets, making them more useful and easier to advertise against. Right now links Tweeted are semantically analyzed by Reuters' Calais and sent to Bit.ly, but we wouldn't be surprised if Twitter was interested in scooping up a small semantics shop and helping it scale so that analysis was being done in house. Twitter may feel like semantics don't need to get that close to consumer users, though. (Disclosure, Calais is a ReadWriteWeb sponsor.)

Topify is a widely loved service that intercepts your new Twitter follower notification emails and sends you much more useful ones. It's great but probably too easy for Twitter to just reproduce itself.

FriendFeed plus Twitter would be a match made in heaven. It would be an engineering powerhouse. It would be a step towards mainstream user adoption of FriendFeed, a service that can't make up its mind which end of the sophistication spectrum it's targeting. It's also quite unlikely to happen. If there's one related startup we can imagine turning down a Twitter acquisition offer, it's probably FriendFeed. (Though the investment-laden and highly ambitious OneRiot is a close second.) Nonetheless, it would be awesome if FriendFeed's cross-network aggregation, threaded conversations, groups, media support, search and more joined forces with Twitter.

Ultimately, it may be most likely that Twitter's next acquisition will be something vapid. A service that aggregates shopping Tweets, or celebrity Tweets, or something else that will fall short of taking advantage of the Twitter platform's huge potential to change the world. Twitter staff makes relatively simple use of its own service, so hoping that it will acquire companies that make it all the more powerfully sophisticated may be an early adopter's pipe dream. [Update: After some discussion this afternoon, I am thinking it's time to reconsider this position I've held for some time. Twitter staff is not full of dummies, I'm sure, and it has probably been inappropriate of me to write as if that's the case.]

Maybe not, though. We wouldn't be shocked to see Twitter pick up at least a few of the companies above. What do you think? Are there other services you'd like to see become part of the Twitter team even more than the above? It's a wild and woolly micro-content ecosystem out there - anything could happen.

You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Doug Coleman, Jolie O'Dell, Dana Oshiro , Lidija Davis and Steven Walling.

This new version comes just in time, as Seesmic, the company behind Twhirl, unveiled its TweetDeck inspired Seesmic Desktop yesterday.

Both TweetDeck and the new Seesmic Desktop were built on top of Adobe AIR, and both feature multi-column views, with the ability to create groups and persistent searches. Both programs, however, also have quite a few features that the other hasn't replicated yet.

The new version of TweetDeck, for example, can now display previews of of TwitPic images, while the new Seesmic client smartly keeps one column on the left side stationary, so that you can always keep an eye on your replies or direct messages, for example. Optionally, TweetDeck can now auto-complete usernames and add hashtags to replies. It now also features support for adding the Digg URL-shortener.

Seesmic also features support for multiple Twitter accounts and it can take a picture from your webcam and post it to TwitPic. Besides its support for Facebook, TweetDeck, on the other hand, has implemented support for more third-party apps like StockTwits, TwitScoop, and video service 12seconds, while the Seesmic Desktop is currently just focused on the basic Twitter experience.

Just a short while ago, making a recommendation for a good desktop Twitter client was easy. For heavy Twitter users who needed multiple columns to group friends and persistent searches, TweetDeck was the way to go. If you just wanted to dip your toes into the Twitter stream, Twhirl was the best choice. Now, however, making these recommendations is a lot harder.

If you want a multi-column Twitter client, both apps have their advantages and disadvantages, but the core Twitter experience on both clients is actually quite comparable. To differentiate themselves from each other, both clients will have to continue to innovate, though, and for us, as consumers, that can never be a bad thing. If you are on a Mac, we also recommend that you give Nambu a try, as it isn't encumbered by some of the limitations of the Adobe AIR platform (our review).

Is there still a market for a simple Twitter client?

With new players like the Mac-only Nambu, as well as other Adobe AIR clients like AlertThingy, the market for Twitter clients is continuously in flux, and it would be preposterous to try to make any predictions about the future of this business. It is important to note, however, that while there is clearly a market for well-designed, multi-column, multi-social network enabled clients, some of these extra features are probably just overkill for a large number of Twitter users. The majority of Twitter users, after all, are still using the web interface to access the service, and a relatively straightforward client like Twhirl is ideally positioned to capture a good slice of this user base - assuming that Seesmic doesn't abandon Twhirl in favor of the Seesmic Desktop.

The developers of Tweetdeck just released a new beta version of their popular Twitter client that now integrates updates from Facebook, and allows users to post messages to both Twitter and Facebook. In the new version of Tweetdeck, your Facebook updates get their own column, and when you post updates to Twitter, you can choose to route these messages to Facebook as well. One nice feature of Tweetdeck's Facebook integration is that it puts a little green dot next to your friends' profile pictures when they are online, which allows you to initiate a chat with these users directly from within Tweetdeck.

If you are already using Tweetdeck, the update will automatically be pushed out to you in the next few days, but if you want to try it out now, you can download it from here.

Seesmic for Facebook - Just the Beginning

Seesmic's Facebook client is currently very straightforward and reminiscent of the earlier Twitter clients in that it only presents you a form for writing your updates and a column with your friends' updates. This, however, is only the first iteration and we have heard that Seesmic is planning to combine both apps (and drop the Twhirl name in favor of Seesmic) in the near future. Seesmic also plans to integrate other social networks like MySpace in the near future.

Currently, Tweetdeck's Facebook integration is a bit more fully-featured than Seesmic's, but both are still at the beginning of their development cycles and we will keep a close eye on both. We also expect to see more Facebook applications in the near future.

The Twitterization of Facebook - A Culture Clash?

From what we have seen, both Seesmic and Tweetdeck are clearly interested in taking the twitterization of Facebook to the next level, though it will be interesting to see how Facebook's current userbase will react to this. Facebook's and Twitter's cultures are still very different and Twitter users have developed their own set of rules over the last year or so (think '@' replies, retweeting, etc.), while status updates on Facebook have a very different feel and don't necessarily invite two-way communication the way Twitter does.

We don't think the sky is falling, but there may be an earthquake on the horizon as the tech industry begins to feel the economic turbulence. Best known in some circles for hiring Robert Scoble for the Fast Company TV online site, Mansueto Ventures is laying off 20 of their employees in their online and marketing department.

Other cuts the company will make include:

• Shelving Upstart, a planned magazine devoted to new businesses
• Closing the Atlanta office except for sales
• Cutting IT help desk coverage
• Curtailing perks like tuition reimbursement and free snacks

As to why the such measures are being taken, it is being reported:"

"CEO John Koten said in a staff memo that despite Fast Company's growth, expenses were rising faster than revenue as the publishing industry business has softened."

Seesmic Lays Off 7

On a smaller scale, video-commenting startup Seesmic will also layoff several of its employees. In order to prepare for "what most are anticipating to be a bleak economic outlook for the considerable time going forward," Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur will cut 7, or 1/3, of Seesmic's employees. Allen Stern noted that this will be in addition to 3 employees that were let go last month.

What's Next?

While these companies will still move forward with their products and services, we can't help but wonder if more layoffs will be seen in the future and from who. We certainly hope the tech industry doesn't see too much news like this future, but there's no denying these situations as fair warnings that the tech industry is not as invincible as it seems.

"ReadWriteWeb" 5x's Really Fast on 12seconds.tv

MacTyler almost gets there, so close! At the end he slaps himself in the face (that's what the screenshot above is). This was his second attempt, his first is here.

Read Write Web Challenge 2 on 12seconds.tv

A bearded reader called beach makes a hash of it.

read write web challenge (5x fast) on 12seconds.tv

To add your entry, you can either click here for an invite to 12seconds.tv or use Seesmic. We have 500 invites for RWW readers to 12seconds.tv. Unfortunately though, the way the private beta invites are being given out isn't ideal. You have to fill in a brief survey and the invites are emailed out to you. But I did that and I haven't gotten mine yet! So if you'd like to participate and you don't get your invite soon, head over to Seesmic and upload your video there.

Whichever method you use, add the link in the comments below and we'll post the best ones!

Here's mine, via Seesmic:

Even after all these years of practice at saying ReadWriteWeb... but it was late on a Friday night and after a couple of beers ;-)

UPDATE: A few more entrants:

Seesmic founder Loïc Le Meur

mackenzey (maybe not quite fast enough)

RWW x5 fast on 12seconds.tv

pixites (ok this is a little scary)

rww on 12seconds.tv