[tweetmeme]Twitter is what you make of it. A service that has been largely community driven, Twitter’s free API access means developers can create some truly unique ways of interacting with it. Here’s one that’s quite old, but I don’t think has got the attention it deserves. Reportage, by WhereCloud.

Reportage is a client like no other. Instead of having to deal with one linear timeline, Reportage’s approach is following one person at a time. You do this by ‘tuning in’ to each account, largely recognizing them by their avatar, using its gorgeous pseudo radio tuner user interface. By the sound of it, the approach seems totally absurd, something that’s set to fail. Using it however is a whole new experience.

I’ve so far followed what the SA team members have been saying by looking through the SA twitter feed—which follows all current writers. However, it doesn’t show me their replies, and conversations are also cut off. With Reportage, I can see a feed of who @brandonpittman has been talking to, and if I’m following those people he’s been talking to, their replies, in one cohesive list. Another use case, for me at least, is following news sites. I’ve given up on RSS as a source of news, using it as just a way to catch up on the week’s happenings. Twitter on the other hand keeps me updated with the current news. With reportage, I have a bunch of techie feeds like Ars Technica, MacRumors et al, and I can see through them if if I’ve missed anything. If I need to read an article, hit the Instapaper button—I’ve switched from Read it Later back to Instapaper—and it’s saved for future reading. This way I don’t even have to be following a lot of these feeds, since you can load users that are outside of your following list.

That was about the accounts you’ve marked. But there’s a general ‘Timeline-esque’ view as well—the world view. This will pull any recent tweets from your timeline, or those who have mentioned you, and group them into one avatar/icon for each user. So instead of seeing my entire timeline at one go, I get to see @kyleve’s tweets first, then @teucher’s, and so on. If @Teucher and @kyleve have had a conversation during this timeframe, both their tweets will show in each other’s feeds—that is, everything that’s relevant to that user, but only from what’s happening in my twitter feed. I hope I’m explaining it right. I’m get to get comfortable with this workflow though. It’s a little too much to handle for those following over 200 people since there’ll be a lot more to ‘tune in’ to. Luckily there’s a ‘mute’ button, so if you don’t care about a certain chunk of people, you can turn them off. Oh, and did I mention you can send out tweets from the app as well?

Reportage does have its drawbacks however. First is it’s not very good at caching. Either it’s buggy, or it’s just not meant to cache. So if it has downloaded its set quota of tweets, it won’t automatically fetch tweets from those accounts I’ve marked. So if Ars Technica doesn’t get its tweets in, I have to manually load them in. It doesn’t have threaded conversations, so you can’t follow conversations that involve people you don’t follow. There’s no offline mode, so if the app doesn’t register an internet connection on launch, it automatically quits. It also doesn’t have support for modern things like lists (or even have its own version of grouping multiple accounts). No twitter searches either, so it can’t be used for tracking your business. Instead it wastes space on ‘local tweets’ and personal timeline.

Overall, it’s hard to recommend Reportage to everyone. It certainly doesn’t replace Tweetie as your standalone twitter app, nor does it supplement a business oriented app. I like it though. I really like it. Like I’ve been launching it every day (though not many days have passed). It’s got a really slick user interface, good looking list and profile views, and lets me sit back and catch up on what’s important. That’s what it’s about. It’s about cutting out the noise, sitting back and enjoying tweets. Following your favourite people with added enthusiasm rather than having to filter out their tweets from everything else. Perhaps you might want to do the same—perhaps I should be recommending it to everyone. That’ll be a very confused $1.99 at the App Store.

[Update: If you do get the app, remember to uncheck the "Follow @reportage" while giving out your username and password at the welcome screen. Sneaky.]