looking for a twitter app for the iphone

September 9, 2009 11:59 AM

What Twitter app for the iPhone do you like?

I'm looking for a Twitter app for the iPhone. I often want to send links via Twitter from my iPhone. Problem is, sometimes the link plus the text I type in is more than 140 characters.

So, the question: is there a Twitter app for the iPhone that will automatically take URLs and shrink them via bit.ly or tinyurl or some other URL-shrinking service?

I currently use Tweetie for the iPhone and see no way of having it do this automatically. If I'm missing something with this app let me know.

Thanks.

posted by dfriedman to Computers & Internet (16 answers total)

TwitterFon!
posted by elsietheeel at 12:00 PM on September 9, 2009 [2 favorites]

Twittelator. Not only shrinks URLs, will also let you post media, and automatically uploads them, plus about a billion other great features.
posted by Lokheed at 12:04 PM on September 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

You can use Tweetie to shorten links, just not (AFAIK) by copying-and-pasting. I do it with this bookmarklet.
posted by cerebus19 at 12:26 PM on September 9, 2009

seconding TwitterFon. If you send a lot of direct messages, Twitterfon's threaded conversation view can't be beat. (I've yet to encounter a twitter app on any platform that does threaded conversations of direct messages as well as TwitterFon does on the iphone.)

if anyone knows of a desktop app that does properly separated and threaded DM, I'm all ears
posted by namewithoutwords at 12:32 PM on September 9, 2009

Seconding Twittelator Pro. It does everything you need it to do, unfussily. It has never crashed on me. You can install a Safari bookmark that will automatically shorten URLs and open the Twittelator comment screen -- very useful. Works w/ Twitpic, yfrog, Twitvid, and other media uploading services. It's the iPhone app I use the most. Well, except for the game Flight Control...
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:59 PM on September 9, 2009

I like Twitteriffic. It sill shorten them if you click on the asterisk, then Shorten URLs.

namewithoutwords: tweetie does what you're talking about on os x
posted by cdmwebs at 1:26 PM on September 9, 2009

I use Birdfeed, which shortens URLs and I think lets you type more than 140 characters, so it might do the trick.
posted by malevolent at 1:32 PM on September 9, 2009

TwitterFon and Twittelator Pro are both excellent

If you want pure speed i would go with TwitterFon

more interested in features has to be Twittelator Pro
posted by moochoo at 2:12 PM on September 9, 2009

I like Tweetdeck.
posted by reenum at 2:13 PM on September 9, 2009

Seconding Birdfeed. Besides having an extremely well polished interface, the offline caching is a lifesaver if you're the sort of person who goes out of signal range every now and then.
posted by Remy at 2:23 PM on September 9, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks for all the responses. Checking out twitterfon and twitterlator.
posted by dfriedman at 3:28 PM on September 9, 2009

Slight correction, I misspoke. The Twittelator Pro bookmark will import full URLs into the Twittelator comment screen, then you can shorten them automatically before posting the tweet. Same difference, but I made it sound like the URLs were imported after shortening, and that is not the case.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:39 PM on September 9, 2009

I'm fairly content with Tweetie. I like that it's easy to switch between my two Twitter accounts.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:00 PM on September 9, 2009

nthing Birdfeed. In my experience, it's the best of the bunch.
posted by dyslexictraveler at 9:45 AM on September 10, 2009

I was loving Hahlo.com (web app) but lately you're lucky if you don't have to sign in every seven hours, rather than the stated seven days. When it works, though, it's pretty sweet.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:07 AM on September 10, 2009

One more vote for Twitteriffic. Tap the asterisk button like cdmwebs said.

I've tried several different clients, and it's by far the best (and free!)
posted by Nameless at 11:48 AM on September 10, 2009