Brizzly for Twitter – Review

Our rating:

By: Thing Labs, Inc.

Version #: 1.0

Date Released: 2010-03-10

Developer:

Price: 0.00

User Rating:

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 Brizzly for Twitter is the iPhone implementation of Brizzly.com, a Twitter Web client that at the moment may not be as popular as Seesmic or Hootsuite, but actually holds a lot of promise, considering its design and usability. The Brizzly iPhone app is also quite promising, well designed, and very user-friendly, so much so that it got me thinking that, to be honest, it’s less an iPhone version of the original Web client than it is a more lightweight, less feature-packed, not to mention free, version of my current and long-time favorite Twitter app, Tweetie 2. But that is not to say that the Brizzly app is a mere knockoff of a more popular Twitter app. If anything, it’s an indication of how good Brizzly actually is as a relative newcomer in the Twitter iPhone app domain.

In order to take advantage of the Brizzly app’s useful features, you must first log in with your existing account at Brizzly.com or create a new one in-app. This will enable syncing the app with your Brizzly.com account, which supports multiple Twitter accounts as well as Twitter list management. Currently, though, it appears that adding new accounts and lists is not yet supported by the app. So you have to head over to the Brizzly Web app to do just that.

The Brizzly iPhone app treats you to a remarkably clean interface. Tweets are individually placed inside round-cornered boxes in the timelines, adding to their readability. Your own tweets are highlighted so it’s easy to distinguish your own nonsensical musings from those of the people you follow. Brizzly also features the innovative refresh mechanism that I first encountered with Tweetie 2, where, when you reach the top of the timeline, you pull down with your finger and release to load new tweets. On the other hand, endless scrolling is supported, so you need only wait a few seconds when you reach the bottom of the timeline to load older tweets. Notably absent, though, is the ability to search through tweets in a timeline, as opposed to the usual Twitter-wide search, which Brizzly supports. Switching to landscape mode, whether automatically or manually, is also not (yet) supported.

Composing a tweet on Brizzly is pretty much on par with tweeting using other apps. Brizzly supports automatic URL-shortening using bit.ly, optional geotagging, and photo uploading to Brizzly Pics or your Flickr account. There is, however, a character meter that changes as you write, a sort of progress bar that indicates, along with the 140-character down-counter, how much character space you have left for your tweet. Further, to suit your retweeting needs, Brizzly lets you set your preferred retweet method: you can choose to quote the original tweet, post text only, use ‘via’ attribution, or go with the classic ‘RT’ style, which is my personal preference since it lets me easily add comments in front of the original tweet.

As with most other Twitter apps, navigation tabs are provided at the bottom of the screen. One of Brizzly’s features that is actually quite rare for apps of its kind is the ability to customize the arrangement of these tabs. The default arrangement of the tabs naturally puts the home timeline (‘Home’) first in the row, followed by @mentions (‘Mentions’), then direct messages (‘Messages), then user-explained trending topics (‘News’), and finally, the ‘More’ tab. Now, with custom tabs, you can opt to reconfigure these tabs or even make the hidden ‘Search’ tab front and center if you happen to do a lot of tweet-searching.

There’s a new kid in Twitter App Town. It’s called Brizzly for Twitter, it’s free, and for a newly released, initial-version app, it’s pretty impressive.