Twitter client warfare: Twhirl vs TweetDeck vs Seesmic Desktop and more

There was a time -- not so long ago -- when the power Twitter users were all about Twhirl. This Air app gave (and still gives) you quick access to different views of your Twitter network, as well as your FriendFeed stream. But Twhirl didn't last as the go-to client once the Twitterati discovered TweetDeck. This service has the advantage of giving users a multi-column dashboard of everything going on in Twitter that they might care about, all at once on one screen. It also let users set up ad-hoc groups of people to follow, and search terms to track. It's the Bloomberg terminal for Twitterheads.

TweetDeck is not the only multi-column Twitter client, however. On Tuesday Seesmic, which publishes Twhirl, released a preview of its own new multi-column client, Seesmic Desktop. It's going up against another new client, the Mac-only Nambu, as well as the relatively unknown AlertThingy, which supports more non-Twitter services than any other Twitter client. Heavy Twitter users would do well to consider these other apps. They might also want to reconsider Twhirl, which, while not strictly multi-column, is multi-window, and allows users to set up a dashboard page of their microblog activity on multiple accounts and networks at once.

As you see in the chart below, social network butterflies will likely be best served by AlertThingy, which supports a ridiculous number of services. It has a clunky search feature, however, and an inelegant system to shorten links. FriendFeed fans should keep Twhirl on their radar. In this group of products, it has the best support for that network.

For power Twitter users, the new Seesmic Desktop has promise. It has a better interface for managing saved searches and groups than TweetDeck (above), and it's the only app in this roundup that lets you use your webcam to snap pics for upload to Twitter (via Twitpic) directly. The preview release available now has bugs, though, and it also lacks a filter feature, which is an important tool to use alongside search to control the content you see in Twitter columns. We'd wait a while before adopting this app.

Nambu is a strong product for Mac users. It does all the important things that TweetDeck does, except access services other than Twitter, and it adds support for displaying content from multiple Twitter accounts at once. It is easy to tweak what you see on-screen, and has the most Mac-like interface of these products.

We can't consign TweetDeck to the dustbin of Twitter apps yet. It is still the the multi-column Twitter client we'd recommend for Windows users. It's stable, attractive, easy to use and flexible. A publicly availble beta version also supports Facebook -- the only other app in this collection to offer that is AlertThingy. We're keeping TweetDeck as our primary Twitter client for the time being, but we have an an eye on Seesmic Desktop, though. It shows great promise.

Download links: AlertThingy | Twhirl | TweetDeck | Nambu | Seesmic Desktop

Multicolumn Twitter clients compared