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Which Twitter app do the cool kids use?

The trouble with Twitter apps for Mac is that there is a ton of them out there, and pretty much all of them are good — or at least good enough that it really comes down to personal preference as to which one you consider the best.

So instead of laboriously going through a long list and making comparisons that only a geek would love, I decided to check in on what the cool kids are doing. By that I mean the people who make their living writing about Mac apps and just happen to have Twitter accounts. As you may know, each tweet is accompanied by a line showing its time and date and the program that was used to create it — thus revealing the tweeters’ app of choice.

I went to a site called MacNotables, which claims — not without merit — to have “the Mac experts you want to hear from.” With one possible exception, I agree that their experts are indeed notable and might even pass — in their own nerdy way — for the cool kids of the Mac universe.

I hunted them all down on Twitter, and here’s what I found:

(“Web,” by the way, refers to Twitter’s web interface.)

Christopher Breen, Macworld senior editor — Tweetie

(This one’s dicey, because I’m not sure if I have the right guy. Update: Confirmed. This one’s right.)

Bryan Chaffin, editor in chief of Mac Observer and iPod Observer — Tweetie

Jim Dalrymple — CEO and publisher of Loop Insight — Tweetie (along with a couple from Twitterific)

Adam Engst, publisher of TidBITS and Take Control — TweetDeck

Tonya Engst, editor-in-chief at TidBITS Publishing — web, with a couple from TweetDeck

(Interesting that the Engsts appear to differ.)

Dan Frakes, Macworld senior editor — Twitterific mainly, but also Birdfeed (an iPhone app) and web

Andy Ihnatko, technology pundit and self-described beloved personality — web

(OK, OK, he truly is beloved.)

Chuck Joiner, the voice of MacVoices, MacNotables and The Mac Jury — mainly Nambu, but also twhirl and txt

(Anyone know what “txt” might mean?)

Ted Landau, columnist for Mac Observer and Macworld, founder of MacFixIt — Tweetie

Bob LeVitus, author of dozens of technical books — Tweetie

Dennis Sellers, founder/editor-in-chief of Macsimum News — web

Jason Snell, Macworld editorial director — lately Twitterific, before that Tweetie

(He has an article in the August 2009 issue of Macworld about how to use AppleScript with Twitterific.)

Robin Williams, writer of many technical books — this heretic does not appear to have a Twitter account

And here is the final cool-kid tally:

Tweetie — six
web — four
Twitterific — three
TweetDeck — two
Nambu — one
Twhirl — one

Looks like Tweetie is the way to go if you want to be with the in crowd. Be careful, though, because they could switch at the drop of a tweet and leave you on the outs.

Posted Saturday, July 4, 2009 in

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  1. txt means from a text message, like from a non-iphone owner who still wants to be able to tweet from their phone.

    Dean

  2. I’ve been using Tweetie for a while now, and its the best mac and iphone app for twitter by a long shot.

    matthew l





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