The 3 Best Twitter Desktop Apps

A few days ago, I got a tweet from someone who seemed to be surveying on which is the best Twitter client around. Being a software junkie, I must have tried all of them already. There are a lot of sites listing many of the popular Twitter clients. I thought it would be helpful if I not only share my opinion on this but also narrow down the list to only include the ones which are truly the best.

In my opinion, the four important areas that a Twitter desktop client has to be good at are:
(1) the performance, (2) ease of use, (3) features and (4) the user interface.

Based on these criteria, I was only able to include 3 Twitter apps that are worth their salt. Each has their own pros and cons so choose the one which suits your needs the most. The focus is on their desktop capabilities so other things like iPhone support aren’t weighed in on the results. Also, this is a comparison from a Windows user’s perspective. 

They are listed in no particular order. Click on the images for a larger version of the screenshots.

DestroyTwitter 1.7.2 Beta
http://destroytwitter.com/

Pros:
Simple and straightforward user interface
User-friendliest for using text over images for buttons
Away mode for freezing your canvases/views
Downloadable custom themes/skins
Great for both power tweeters and casual tweeters
Backed by Adobe (makes it better supported?)

Cons:
Not-so-good groups management
Filtering tweets is bit of a chore
The only one of the 3 with no ability to preview short URLs
Does not support multiple Twitter accounts

Mixero 0.43.2
http://mixero.com/

Pros:
Excellent groups and contact management
Has the best tweet-filtering system
Easiest way of following conversations with @replies
Avatars mode for a more compact view of the app
Preview short URLs
Perfect for power tweeters

Cons:
Slightly big learning curve
The least intuitive user interface among the three apps listed here
User interface skin is not yet customizable
Looks too much like Twhirl which makes it kinda ugly
No support for multiple accounts yet

Note: Mixero is currently in private beta. Follow @Mixero to get your invitation code.

TweetDeck 0.26.4
http://tweetdeck.com/

Pros:
Supports multiple Twitter accounts
Support for several Twitter services like Twitscoop
Preview short URLs and see statistics too
Ability to customize user interface colors
Facebook integration (status updates only)

Cons:
Too many features which you may or may not need
UI looks a bit boring (in my opinion)

I should mention that these apps are frequently updated so this comparison may not be that accurate after a month that’s why I included the version numbers. But I am confident that these 3 will remain the best of all for quite some time. 

It would be nice if programs like this had built-in tips or some sort of help system. Like most tweeters, I don’t like reading long documentations. We just want to tweet!

So which one of these do I really use? I will let you guess on that one.