The Battle for Your Twitter Account

Last week I recommended Tweetvisor as a viable alternative to Tweetdeck, with, in my opinion, the advantage of being web based, and not a desktop app like so many Twitter clients.Today I would like to introduce another web based client; PeopleBrowsr.

PeopleBrowsr is still in Alpha release, with a Beta version available in the next couple of weeks. It's therefore not without it's bugs, but mostly works pretty well. So what's so great about it, and is it better than Tweetvisor?

Firstly, PeopleBrowsr caters for columns (or 'stacks'), and the user gets to decide the content, and the number of columns. This allows for more flexibility than even Tweetdeck, and is more than enough even for power users. Getting the right content into each column was a bit of a challenge, but I eventually achieved my goal. On an older monitor (4:3) 3 columns fit just right, while on a widescreen monitor 4 should easily be possible.

PeopleBrowsr has realtime updating, and this can be a bit tiring if you are following a lot of people. This is where the tags and filters come into play. One of the things I like about their system is the VIP button.

From your 'Followers' column, it allows one-click tagging of VIP's, which can then be displayed in another column. I loved this feature. Other tags, or combinations of tags can be added, and even shared with other users.

Another interesting feature are buttons that open a dedicated column for CNN, Digg, Newsweek and others. This is better than following these feeds; it puts all their Tweets into one column where you can scan for breaking news etc.

There are also a wide selection of custom settings, and the user can choose the content he sees. For example, you can choose to see the location of each person next to their Tweets. Want to see more Tweets per column? Easy! Choose the 'condense posts' setting, which removes the avatars, and reduce the font size.

As I said, PeopleBrowser is still in Alpha, and new features are being added all the time. This is another thing that I like about web based apps; no updating to the new level, it's just there! This is definitely a worthy competitor to Tweetvisor, and in my mind even better than the mighty Tweetdeck. I look forward to seeing their initial Beta offering.

Thanks for reading.