Haven’t seen a new twitter client in a while. At least one on the Mac and worth talking about. Kiwi, made by YourHead [Software], is a twitter client that’s much like some of the clients we’ve seen so far, but it seems to fill in a lot of wants and needs by the twitter community.
On launch, it’s very much like Tweetie. It’s got a vertical layout, similar shaped ‘tweets’, similar styled scrollbar, and a similarly placed ‘new tweet’ button at the bottom. Kiwi however comes with a whole bunch of stuff that I’m pretty sure Brichter would never allow in Tweetie.
First up, is themes. I’m not sure if themes have ever worked for a twitter client—look at how big a fail Bluebird was. Problem is, they never quite look as right as the original ‘default’ theme, which the developer so obviously put his most effort into. Users can create themes, but they never quite work with the app as whole, always looking disconnected from the main experience. Still, themes are there, and they’re both easy to use as well as create.
Kiwi also comes with the new Retweet feature. A useful hack is the ability to switch accounts before sending out a retweet. I’m a little disappointed that it doesn’t offer you the option of editting the retweet right from within the retweet palette; you know, going from new retweet to old school. Just a thought.
One much needed feature is the ability to add filters to your timeline. If you find people spamming you about some new MacBook Pro you can never win, or perhaps a new quick-file-sharing service they’re just about to use, you can add those keywords and have them be marked a colour, hide them, or if your theme supports it, a CSS style!
Multiple accounts are now standard in almost all twitter clients. Kiwi however goes as far as to allow you to create ‘account groups’. You can add multiple twitter accounts within a single feed. You can even add a ‘saved search’ to show up in your timeline—how handy will that be! I haven’t had the time to actually see if it’s as revolutionary as I think it is, but it seems like a nice feature to have.
There are some things Kiwi doesn’t have. Most important, is no built in viewer for looking at images from twitter image services like twitpic or img.ly. While it supports outgoing retweets, there’s no support for incoming retweets yet [Update: Odd, it works just fine on my iMac, as it should]. Its user interface is also a little quirky. Conversations don’t show up that quick. There’s no user profiling. It doesn’t have any notification system outside of the Kiwi window itself. And, there are bugs.
At the end of the day, Kiwi is a pretty slick twitter client, feature rich, and I’m sure after a few more iterations will carve itself a nice little share of users. Costs $15 for a license, with a fairly functional demo. Go check it out.
