That assertion caught the attention of Sysomos, as Twitter's data seemed inconsistent with some of the analysis that the social media analytics company has done on the Twitter ecosystem.

So Sysomos took a sample of 25 million tweets from Friday, March 11. That data shows that 42% of tweets were made by unofficial apps - more than four times the figures that Twitter claims.

Which Unofficial Apps Are Popular?

Sysomos notes that among these unofficial apps, the most popular are TweetDeck, UberSocial and Echofon, all owned by UberMedia, a company that ran into trouble with Twitter last month when two of its apps, UberTwitter and Twidroyd were suspended.

Despite the strong showing of the UberMedia clients here, it's worth pointing out that these stats put the popular TweetDeck at just 5.5% of total tweets, down from 19.9% in a June 2009 report.

Why Are Sysomos' Numbers Different From Twitter's?

Sysomos says that the "disconnect" between its analysis and Twitter's claims probably comes from the way in which these figures were calculated. Sysomos has presented the client usage here based on the total number of tweets on March 11. Twitter's numbers comes from the total number of users.

It may be that the users who are on Twitter's official apps aren't as active as those who are using the unofficial ones. That's not terribly surprising considering that these apps tend to offer more features than you can find via Twitter's website - they offer analytics, better notifications, and integration with other social media services, for example.

Even though the Sysmos analysis shows that there is still strong usage of unofficial Twitter apps, that number may be steadily on the decline. The June 2009 study found that 55% of tweets were made on these apps, while Friday's figures now put unofficial app usage at 42%. As Twitter improves its own mobile and Web offerings, this trend will continue, helped on by what seems to be a strong stance from Twitter that it will be so.

• Threaded conversations
• In-app image previews for Twitpic, yFrog, Twitgoo, Phodroid, Posterous and Twitter profile images
• In-app link previews
• Twidroid plugins 1.0 + example on our website
• Action menu design streamlined with icons
• Share option for single tweet
• View large avatar in profile
• Saved searches sync with twitter
• Marker for tweets annotated with geo information
• Report spam
• Remember timeline position setting (default: on)
• Jump to top in timeline button
• Autocomplete usernames for timeline and replies
• Bring up tweet box directly by typing @
• DM list now with avatars
• Friends/Followers now available in free version and moved to profile view

The update also includes a fix for HTC Hero image upload problems, which users of that handheld will undoubtedly appreciate.

As you can see from the list above, the new Twidroid is now a worthy competitor to its iPhone rivals, especially Tweetie 2.0, which also introduced similar features like threaded conversation and geolocation only months ago. In fact, Twidroid may have just one-upped its competitors as it is now one of the first mobile applications to introduce a plugin platform.

Twidroid Does Plugins

Twitter client plugins are just now starting to be heavily discussed, thanks to a post by web guru Dave Winer, which argued for the need for a programmable Twitter client. Loic Le Meur, maker of the Seesmic application, then followed up by expanding upon his vision for Seesmic's development platform. Having just announced his move from Adobe AIR to Windows for the continued development of the PC-based Seesmic Desktop application, Le Meur writes that the app is now ready to become a programmable client. When launched, the desktop version of Seesmic will allow third-party developers to build features or services that can be integrated into Seesmic's core application.

Similarly, Twidroid's plugin platform offers the same type of promise, albeit on the mobile platform. Thanks to this new functionality, third-party developers can extend Twidroid with features like URL shortener integrations or additional sharing features, notes the website. To kick off the launch, the company has introduced a sample plugin for Google Maps integration which shows a Twitterer's current location on a map and allows them to update or annotate that location as well.

Adding a plugin architecture is a major achievement among Twitter client applications -- and certainly among the mobile set -- as it will allow the apps to become highly customizable and personalized creations unique to each and every user's needs. The only problem with plugins is that those you add in one client may not be available in another. That is, plugins added to the upcoming version of Seesmic won't necessarily be available in Twidroid and vice versa. This points to a need for Twitter itself to become the extensible platform and not each individual app. However, in the meantime, regular users of Twidroid will certainly enjoy this added functionality as they begin to customize the app to their liking.

There have to be hundreds of Twitter clients out there now for everything from the desktop, to the mobile, to the web. However, there's something they all have in common; they display Twitter posts as a stream of updates where everyone's updates are mixed in together as they're created.

With Reportage, though, the concept is very different. Instead of watching a stream, you can easily move between different users on Twitter and watch each one of them individually.

World vs. Stars

After you install the app and authenticate with Twitter, the main screen, called "World" is populated with the people who you follow on Twitter. Using a radio-like dial at the bottom of the screen, you can scroll through these folks as if you were selecting different radio stations on an old-fashioned stereo.

Of course, if you follow a lot of folks - or, heck, even if you follow anything more than a small handful - scrolling through your Twitter friends in this way would be far too cumbersome. That's why you'll want to use the "Stars" feature instead.

The "Stars option," available from another button at the bottom of the screen, is a group of your favorites which you can customize. To add someone to your Stars, you do so from their profile page, or so the app advises. Unfortunately, I have to admit that it took me a minute to find the setting.

You see, when you tap on a person's avatar, you'll be taken to a page of their tweets. It's here where I expected to find the "star" button, but it wasn't displayed. In order to see the option, what you have to do is tap on one of that person's tweets and only then will you see the option to add them to your stars. Alternately, you can double-tap on their icon to be taken to said profile page. That's actually a much quicker way of doing things and, to be honest, the app should probably note this is how it's done.

Why Would You Want This?

Once you have a limited group of favorites (stars) set up, you can then scroll through the dial and tune into each user individually. Clearly, this is not the way you're going to interact with Twitter on an everyday basis, but it's a fabulous way to get caught up on your friends' tweet history after you've taken some time away from the service (and let's admit it - we do that every now and then, no matter how Twitter-addicted we are). In fact, we can't think of a better way to quickly review all the recent tweets from a select group. Even in clients like TweetDeck which allows for grouping, you're not going to get as complete a history as you would with Reportage.

The Reportage app is available for $2.99 in the iTunes App Store.