Giving TweetDeck and Twhirl a Whirl

If you’ve been using Twitter for a while you’re probably aware of the fact that there are quite a few Twitter applications out there that aim to make Twitter more functional and easier to use. If you use a mobile phone, there are many good Twitter apps for iPhones, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile based devices that make using Twitter on the road a real pleasure. I’ll save my comments and opinions about those apps for another post. Today, I’m going to focus on what I consider to be the top two desktop Twitter applications, TweetDeck and Twhirl.

Now, I could bore you with a long post comparing and nitpicking every feature, or lack of features, in both of these applications but to be honest, except for the fact that Twhirl has a much cooler logo, they both work extremely well and are virtually identical, except for three main things.

The most obvious difference, as you can see from the side-by-side comparison, is the fact that TweetDeck puts your friend’s tweets, @replies, and DMs in separate columns and Twhirl makes you click an icon to switch views. Not a major pain in the mouse finger but I prefer the way TweetDeck does it. I would like to point out that I use a multiple monitor setup and keep TweetDeck open on a monitor by itself, but for those of you with a single monitor, Twhirl’s single column layout may be preferable. I do prefer using Twhirl on my laptop for this reason.

The second big difference, and for me, the defining one, is the fact that at this time Twhirl (I’m using the newest version, 8.8) still does not have built-in spell checking and TweetDeck does. One of my pet peeves is typos and even though I reread almost every tweet before I click the post button, some still slip through from time to time when I’m using Twhirl. I really like the way that, like Twitter, TweetDeck highlights misspelled words for me and then lets me right click to select the correct spelling from a list of suggested words.

The last real difference is that Twhirl lacks the group function that TweetDeck has. For those of you with lots of follower that want to be able to group them to make keeping up with certain followers easier, you’ll want to go with TweetDeck.

The bottom line for me is that both Twhirl and TweetDeck are fine Twitter applications, both of which have some differences that will give you a reason to prefer one over the other, but until Twhirl adds spell checking, I will stick to using TweetDeck, unless I’m using my laptop.

EDIT: Twhirl has added spell checking to their latest version so for now, the  differences are nearly nil. I understand that Twhirl is also working on a multiple column layout and I’m sure will eventually add a group feature, at which point there won’t be much to distinguish them from each other besides Twhirl’s cooler logo.