At 28, he’s already left quite a stamp on mobile interfaces: he’s the guy who invented that neat trick where you “pull” down on an iPhone screen to refresh the page of an app. Many of the most popular iOS apps use it now, including Facebook and Apple’s own Mail app. Same with his fast-scrolling technique for apps. Oh, and he sold Tweetie, which the Verge dubbed “the best Twitter app ever,” to Twitter itself, at the age of 25.

Brichter started his career in tech at the top: he was recruited out of college six months before graduation by Apple, to work on the iPod team. He ended up declining the offer. But Apple kept after him and dangled another job after he graduated: this one, luckily enough, on Scott Forstall’s brand new and super-secret iPhone team.

Brichter’s new iOS app, Letterpress, is a slick two-player word game that’s had much of the tech and design world buzzing when it was released in late October. It saw a fast uptake among users too: 60,000 downloads in the first day; now 1 million after the first month. But there’s a whole lot more going on inside than just the ability to create word strings.

Letterpress

The sole employee and proprietor of Atebits, Brichter is among the smartest and most innovative user interface developers working on Apple’s mobile platform today. That’s why Letterpress, though a well-designed amusement to fill downtime, is for him is not really a game but “a Trojan Horse” for an extremely ambitious — or as he put it to me, “insane” — experiment with the future of how graphics are displayed on a mobile device.

He built his own version of the user interface framework, the software that sits right above the graphics processor on an iOS device. Apple creates that for developers — it was completely unnecessary for him to do this. But this is the kind of thing he considers “fun.”

“It’s insane,” he admitted. “But I wanted to experiment with different ways of driving graphics … Apple’s [UIKit] is the best, but I wanted to try.” The experiment was a resounding success — and now has a million guinea pigs testing his code via Letterpress. And, he said, “there have been zero issues” with what he built.

On a bitterly cold day last week, we met up over coffee in a tiny Center City Philadelphia cafe, where we talked about the how working as a solo app developer has changed over the years, how he misses burritos and everything about California except the weather (!), and what he expects from the new era of design at Apple.

The changing App Store

Brichter, who comes across very humble, sincerely said he has no idea if 1 million downloads of an app in its first month is actually good or not.

“The App Store is so big now that I don’t know if that necessarily is a success or not. I didn’t necessarily define success [going into it].” And it’s totally different than his first big hit, Tweetie, the Twitter client he sold to Twitter in 2010. “You can’t compare them,” he insisted. “Tweetie was a paid app,” whereas Letterpress is free.

We write a lot here about how tough it is, especially for small developers, to stand out these days in Apple’s gigantic App Store. But you won’t find Brichter pining for the old days.

“I started [programming] 10 years ago with original OS X public beta. It’s been a long run for me. … At the same time, someone nowadays has all of these tools available, like Cocos2D, GitHub, StackOverflow; they can get on the App Store and get exposed to millions of people. It’s downright easy now,” he said.

How he works

Clearly, Brichter chooses his projects well. So how does he know what will work?

Everything needs to line up, he said. He uses the analogy of walking through a forest and you suddenly glimpse that view where all the trees happen to align perfectly and you can glimpse an unobstructed opening. That’s how he knows when to pursue a project.

“You have to consider every tree,” he said. “With the Letterpress idea, a whole bunch of things happened to align that made that an obvious thing to pursue: games had taken over the App Store, I wanted to try a free app, and I wanted to test a whole bunch of other technologies.”

High hopes for the future of iOS design

Design is one of Brichter’s passions and specialties. So while he demurred when I asked him what he thought of his old team leader Forstall getting ousted from Apple — he says he didn’t work directly with him at all — he raved about Jony Ive’s elevation in the Apple pantheon and what that will mean.

“I’m excited about Ive” taking over the Human Interface group at Apple, where he will lead both industrial design and the design of the software that runs on it. “He has good taste.” He paused. “But more important than good taste, he has the ability to” — he points to the MacBook Air in front of me — “he’s true to the materials, to the medium he’s working in. One of my complaints about design of iOS is it’s doing things that aren’t true to the hardware.”

“My design goals with Letterpress were to do things that the graphics hardware was really good at. [Ive] is the kind of person who has the same aesthetic. It’s not superficial — he’d think about [the design of iOS and an iOS device] all the way through” not just make something that looked good, he said.

When I mention is Apple known for that — thinking hardware and software through so they work together, he acknowledges that it used to be like that.  “But I don’t know when that disconnect happened.”

Why skeuomorphism isn’t dead at Apple

All this talk of the skeuomorphic design philosophy favored by Steve Jobs will be following Forstall out the door is too simplistic and wrong, he said. Skeuomorphism is much more than visual — like the “linen” background texture on the iPhone or the gradients applied to the new iTunes icon. There’s also the skeuomorphic animations in an OS: page turns, slide to unlock, etc.

“I don’t think skeuomorphism is bad at all. We need that [animations] to interact with devices in a human way. Gaudy textures are just a visual design problem … I hope they tone it down.”

The tip of the iceberg

He’s going to be focusing on Letterpress for a while, and “use it as a testbed for more stuff.” But as for what’s next…

“I have a thousand half-baked product ideas. I think I’d like to focus more on infrastructure before I actually do those,” he said. “It’s like an iceberg. No one is solving the fundamental problems underneath the surface correctly. I want to give that a crack.”

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To get the new app, you’ll first need to ensure that your Mac is updated to OS X 10.6.6. Once you are all up to speed, with the new Mac App Store installed, you can go ahead and download the updated application for free. You can’t just update your existing version of Tweetie.

When first launching the new Twitter for Mac application, it’s clear that this is no major UI overhaul. Using small but significant visual tweaks, Loren Brichter and the Twitter team have stayed true to what made the first Tweetie such a success: a simple and clean interface, lacking unnecessary distraction.

The most obvious change is the modified sidebar, which now sports a sleek translucent black look, along with two new icons — offering access to your lists and profile information respectively.

In Twitter for Mac, what was once a “New Tweet” button in Tweetie now offers up a menu of commonly used actions. These actions include tweeting, sending a direct message, navigating to a specific user, marking all tweets as read or accessing the application’s preferences. For advanced Twitter users, this is a welcome change, but having to click twice to compose a tweet may annoy some. Either way, customizable keyboard shortcuts are still here to please everyone.

Twitter for Mac now supports native retweets — just hover over a tweet in your timeline to see the retweet button. However, for those that like to add a short message of their own to a retweet, the option to repost or “quote” a tweet instead is still thankfully present (accessible by right-clicking on any tweet in your timeline).

Trending topics have also been introduced — click on the search icon and a list of what is trending worldwide will appear.

One of the most commonly requested features has finally been introduced, as users can now delete tweets within the application. To delete a tweet, just select the one you want removed and either right-click and select the appropriate option, or press command followed by the delete button.

Conversation management has also changed. In Tweetie, you could double-click on a message to see an entire conversation. No matter how deep into the conversation you delved, Tweetie always displayed a breadcrumb navigation history of your actions at the top of the application. Sadly, this handy navigation element has been removed in Twitter for Mac, replaced instead with just a single back button.

On the plus side, for those with newer touchpads on their Macs, gestures have been introduced — select a tweet, and three-finger swipe to the right to see the full discussion. If there’s no further conversation to display, a three-finger swipe will bring you to a user column for the person whose tweet you have highlighted. If there’s a link in the tweet, the swipe will open it in your default browser.

Remember in Tweetie when you wanted to send a tweet with a long URL? You had to click that ‘Shorten URL’ button. In Twitter for Mac you can just paste in any URL, no matter how long, and Twitter will do the hard work for you. The displayed character count for your tweet will already account for the URL being shortened. There doesn’t appear to be a way to turn auto-shortening off, which might be an issue for some.

Despite a few questionable changes, including the removal of the option to see if a user is following you or not, the features introduced to Twitter for Mac make for a huge overall improvement, which is made all the more enjoyable thanks to the applications newfound speed. Twitter for Mac is fast, three times faster according to Twitter. Switching from one account to the other, from your timeline, to your replies, is all super fast and  fluid, and your feed updates in real- or near real-time.

Highs: Fast; clean, attractive and intuitive UI; free

Lows: Lacks some features power-users might miss

If you’ve just downloaded the Mac App Store, make this your first download. Even if you don’t use Twitter, this new client is a pretty good reason to sign up.

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Since there’s no way to set the filter terms from within the Tweetie preference pane we have to fire up the Terminal app and add them directly. What we’ll be doing is simply using the “defaults write” command to build an array of terms that Tweetie will use to filter out tweets that should otherwise be showing up in the timeline. There are four basic commands for managing the filter. All quoted terms are merely examples, so feel free to change them to whatever you’d like to hide in your Twitter stream:

• Add a term to be filtered out: defaults write com.atebits.tweetie-mac filterTerms -array-add “http://instagr.am”
• Review the terms you have in place: defaults read com.atebits.tweetie-mac filterTerms
• Delete all terms you’re using: delete com.atebits.tweetie-mac filterTerms
• Define many terms at once: defaults write com.atebits.tweetie-mac filterTerms -array “http://gowal.la” “http://instagr.am” “http://4sq.com”

Once you’ve defined the filter terms you want, just restart Tweetie for the changes to be implemented. Now, any posts that would normally show up in your timeline which contain those terms will instead be hidden from view. No more Foursquare, Gowalla, or Instagram. They’re all fine services I’m sure, but not everyone wants to see their links all the time.

This will also come in handy for blocking the latest #QuirkyMovieTitleMeme or for what I’m sure will become a deluge of links from the new Ping Twitter integration. Looking at the URLs used for the Ping links it seems like just adding “itunes.apple.com” to the array of terms should keep those Tweets at bay. Use that with some caution though, as that will also remove any non-shortened App Store links as well.

It’s a shame to have to jump through these hoops just to get a filter working. I suppose I could pick up one of the more up to date twitter clients for Mac but there’s just something about the usability of Tweetie that keeps me coming back. Hopefully we’ll see a Tweetie 2 for Mac come out soon that will make this kind of workaround unnecessary, but I won’t be holding my breath.

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Obviously different applications have different features and capabilities, but, as a die-hard Twitter website user, I was surprised by the difference in focus between these tools. Just as I expect that the tool you use likely reflects your own approach to Twitter, I began to wonder if the tools we use also shape our expectations of how we can use the service.

Is Your Twitter App Shaping Your Social Media Presence?

Between the Twitter website, Tweetie and TweetDeck, there are some pretty major differences. I can’t easily access @ replies made to you on the website; I can’t easily access my follower list on either Tweetie or TweetDeck; I can’t schedule tweets on the site or in Tweetie; I still haven’t worked out how to search in TweetDeck.

Leaving aside the usability of these services (I only worked out how to access a user’s @ replies through trial and error on Tweetie, and there was no feedback to indicate what the app was showing at the time), it’s clear that each of these tools focuses on different aspects of social networking.

The question is: is your chosen tool impacting your social media presence?

You or Them?

Does the tool you’re using focus on you, or on other people? When I attract new followers, I like to check out their profiles, so that I know roughly who I’m talking to. I also like to check out the followers of certain contacts occasionally, to see if I’d like to follow any of them. To do that, I access the list of people I follow, and my friends’ followers — something that’s not as easy to do using either Tweetie or TweetDeck as it is on the website.

Spontaneous or Planned?

Does your Twitter application let you schedule tweets? How usable is the mobile app? For those using Twitter for business, the answers to these questions may drive adoption of a particular tool; those using it purely for fun may well get more out of — and give more to — the experience if it meets our needs on the go as well as when we’re desk-bound.

Broadcast or Consume?

If you simply use Twitter to broadcast your news and views, you probably don’t care whether or not your chosen tool gives you the ability to search for topics or contacts. For me, being unable to search Twitter easily means I’m restricted to relying on my contacts to discuss the topics I’m interested in, or I’m trying to research. In effect, it reduces my independence. Does your Twitter tool let you search easily?

Control or Acceptance?

Tools like TweetDeck offer pretty deep levels of control: not only can you schedule tweets, but you can filter out tweets from your contacts on the basis of content, customize the interface, and keep a very close eye on the responses and retweets your tweets attract. Other tools leave you more at the mercy of your memory and motivation. Customization promotes engagement and ownership, but it also lets you shape the way you use the service to meet your specific desires — provided that’s what you’re after.

Digest or Engage?

All three tools I looked at provided fairly easy access to my @ replies, but the at-a-glace, no-click default view of replies, retweets and direct messages in the TweetDeck interface puts a clear focus on engagement. Tweetie and the Twitter website don’t exactly hide this functionality, but it’s not included in the same view as tweets from the people you follow. With those tools, reading and responding to people you follow is easy; responding to those you don’t follow is more of a challenge.

It may seem like I’m splitting hairs — what does it matter if I have to click a link to see @ replies my contacts have made to me? — but we all know that those clicks add up through the day if you’re particularly interested in that feature. Looking at the default view of any tool is a good way to get an idea of its focus, but if you’re into control, check for customizations, too.

Do you think the Twitter tool you use is affecting the way you engage with the social network?

Image by stock.xchng user pxl666.

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One of the first (and most notable) changes is the price. Whereas Tweetie 2 was $2.99, Twitter is now a free app for all. And that’s without ads. While I’m slightly sore about having paid for what’s now freely available, I don’t begrudge atebits the money and at least I get the update free. One note of warning, if you upgrade from an existing install you’ll have to re-add all your accounts and any drafts you might’ve saved will be lost. Not fantastic, but not tragic, either.

One thing I’m not too crazy about is the new icon. I realize that official corporate backing required a more recognizable and brand-friendly icon, but the Tweetie icon was one of my absolute favorites. At the very least, I’d have liked them to have kept the same color scheme and cut-out style, while just replacing the word-ballon graphic with the Twitter bird.

Things that are improved are the search function, the addition of recommended user lists and the ability to sign up for a new account right from within the app. Those last two you won’t get anywhere else, either, since no public API exists for either function. Another neat feature is that you don’t have to be logged in to use Twitter for iPhone. Searching and trending topics are available to all via a new interface that launches at first startup if you just want to have a look around without creating an account.

Top tweets are now included in search results as well, which should go a long way toward making them more meaningful, and the retweet function (the official version) has been added to the context menu that comes up for each tweet when you swipe. Finally, some visual changes have been made so that the tweets themselves look more like they do on Twitter.com.

Bottom line, if you liked Tweetie on the iPhone, you’ll like official Twitter incarnation. And if you’ve been waiting for a reason to switch, official support and a price tag of free are two very good reasons. It’ll be interesting to see how the development community responds to this. Tweetie was hard enough to compete with before it became officially sanctioned. Once Twitter for iPad hits, I think apps by third-party sources will have a hard time surviving, except by offering sync services and access to other services like Tweetdeck does.

What do you think? Will you be using Twitter or something else on your iPhone now that it’s out?

Just two days after comments by Twitter investor Fred Wilson made third-party Twitter developers nervous about what the company might do, those fears have become reality: The company announced Friday that it has acquired Atebits, maker of Tweetie, one of the top Twitter apps for the iPhone. According to a post by co-founder and CEO Evan Williams on the Twitter blog, the app will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and will now be free (previously, the pro version of Tweetie cost $2.99 to download). Developer Loren Brichter said on his blog that he is joining Twitter’s mobile team and will be developing Tweetie for the iPad.

Developers and other observers immediately started analyzing the purchase as soon as the news broke. Hunch Co-founder Chris Dixon connected Fred Wilson’s comments — which the VC blogger denied were about any specific future action by the company — with the Tweetie acquisition, saying: “Wow, weird coincidence! a Twitter board member blogged about killing twitter apps the same week Twitter released/bought 2 clients!” Engadget editor Nilay Patel said that Twitter buying Tweetie was “roughly equivalent to Microsoft building it’s own WP7 phone – bye bye, ecosystem.”

Former Engadget editor and gdgt co-founder Ryan Block said: “As of today, if your app depends on Twitter for anything other than identity or content syndication, you are officially on notice.” Some developers even formed their own unofficial “union” with a Twitter hashtag — the #unionoftwitterapps, and there is plenty of discussion pro and con about the deal on a Google group for Twitter developers. Daring Fireball blogger John Gruber wrote that “there’s going to be some heavy drinking tonight from developers of other iPhone OS Twitter API clients.”

On Wednesday, a blog post by Wilson raised some hackles in the developer community because he said that some of the features third-party apps have provided, such as picture sharing and URL shortening, should have been part of Twitter to begin with. The suggestion seemed to be that Twitter would either be developing some of those itself, or possibly acquiring them, as it did when it bought Summize and renamed it Twitter Search. Some saw this process as a natural one, since companies have been acquiring third-party apps and add-ons or developing their own services that mimic external ones for years. One developer said after the fuss over the Wilson post blew up that it was totally expected, and that he supported the company’s desire to build in some of those features.

In an interview with the New York Times just before the recent controversy, Ev Williams also said that this process was inevitable, and suggested that the company might buy certain apps, and others it might simply compete with. “There’s some misunderstanding around platforms,” he said. “There’s both a natural win-win relationship between a platform provider and third-party developers, and there’s a natural tension.” He added that there are “tons of opportunities created by the Twitter platform, and things that people will probably be disappointed if they invest in. It’s a question of what should be left up to the ecosystem and what should be created on the platform.”

Clearly, having an iPhone app was crucial to what Twitter felt it needed to provide for users, as opposed to allowing a number of developers — of apps such as Tweetdeck, Twitterific and Echofon — to fill that market need. What other things will the company decide it needs to do? An official desktop app perhaps? Or maybe a URL shortener with built-in analytics, such as Bit.ly (which shares some investors with Twitter already, including Ron Conway)? And if it decides to move into these markets, will it build or buy? Nervous developers everywhere are placing their bets, and will no doubt be asking some pointed questions at next week’s Chirp conference. Loic Le Meur of Seesmic and Iain Dodsworth of Tweetdeck appear to have seen this coming and have expanded the utility of their products. Le Meur also wrote a long blog post about how he sees his app stacking up against Twitter and his view of the ecosystem.

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I have always wanted to post my Twitter photos to an existing, richer photo sharing site: Flickr. Recently, I’ve been trying out Steven Haddox‘s Flickr4Twitter, a service that does just that — and should be useful for budding photojournalists, nano-bloggers and celebrity spotters with

Currently in a public alpha-testing phase, the service allows Twitter clients to simultaneously post photos to a user’s Twitterstream and Flickr account, along with URLs generated by Flickr’s own recently-launched Short URLs service.

Using the service is simple:

1. Create an account using the Sign In With Twitter option; your username will be your Twitter screenname.
2. Authorize Flickr to use the service.
3. Upload your photos using the web upload interface (kinda clunky) or Tweetie. Users of Tweetie 2 on iPhone can configure their client with a “URL Shortening API Endpoint” that sends photos to Flickr rather than Twitpic.
4. That’s it!

The service works invisibly and seamlessly when using Tweetie 2 (see my samples) and means that my mobile photos are instantly shared with my Twitter followers, and are also available on the world’s favorite photo sharing service.

Head on over to Flickr4Twitter to try the service. Incidentally GDZLLA have also launched a competing service, but without Sign In With Twitter capability.

What do you think of this Twitpic alternative?

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But why not buy an iPhone, or a Palm Pre, which I’d had my eye on for several months? The Pre seems to be a good phone, but it doesn’t yet have the apps that the iPhone does. And the monthly fees for Pre service are considerably higher than what I’m paying now. The iPhone’s monthly fees are even higher, and many folks I’ve talked to don’t find it to be a very good phone.

So, keeping my current phone and buying an iPod touch seemed like a good compromise. I can get good Wi-Fi coverage in most areas where I live, so I’ll be able to go online, even without the phone function.

Many of my WWD colleagues already have iPhones. Aliza has recently written about good apps for web workers. Dawn’s shared her favorites, too. But with the holidays coming up, here are some of my ideas for apps to put on that brand-new iPhone or iPod touch:

Communication

• eBuddy. A multi-service instant message client for MSN/Windows Live, AIM, Yahoo, Gtalk, ICQ, Facebook Chat and MySpace Chat. Supports multiple accounts on the same service. Versions for web, Android and other platforms also available. Free.
• Facebook. A well-designed way for Facebook users to keep up with their friends while on the road. The app has had its issues, but they are apparently fixed now. Free.
• Gist. Scott and I have both found Gist useful, and the Gist iPhone app does a pretty good job of presenting a lot of information in a small space. Free.
• LinkedIn. This app keeps LinkedIn users, er, “linked in” from their iPhones and iPod touches. The latest upgrade adds some nice features, including an inbox for LinkedIn messages. Free.
• Nimbuzz. You can use this app to make inexpensive international calls over Wi-Fi. The app also includes a chat function, but it’s pretty rudimentary compared to eBuddy. Free app; rates for calls vary.
• RingCentral. If you’re a RingCentral user, you can use this app to manage your phone messages and more. Free for RingCentral users.
• Tweetie. There are lots of Twitter apps, but so far, I like Tweetie the best. It has a clean interface, and supports multiple Twitter accounts. Thanks for the tip, Darrell! $2.99.
• Waveboard. Mobile access to Google Wave. Will hopes for better access soon; I imagine that this app will become more sophisticated as Wave does. $0.99.

File and Idea Management

• Dropbox. This app is another reason to love Dropbox, which many of us at WWD do. As one would expect from Dropbox, it just works. Free.
• Evernote. My colleagues at WWD like Evernote, too, and I’ve finally seen the light. It’s a great replacement for PhatNotes, which I used to use with various Palm products. (The Palm versions are apparently no longer available.) Free.

News

• Reeder. A very nice and elegant RSS reader that syncs with Google Reader. $0.99.

Just about every news source also has its own iPhone/iPod touch app these days. So far, I’ve been impressed with the ones from NPR and from some news outlets that have used the PodCurry platform.

Password Management

• 1Password. Manage and sync passwords. I’ve been playing with the brand-new version 3, and it’s good enough that I’ve moved from SplashID after many years. Use Dropbox with 1Password to make your password data available on multiple machines. $7.99.
• LastPass. Manage and sync passwords across multiple machines. The Firefox add-on for this service was included in WWD’s Add-Ons Collection. Apps for iPhones and other mobile devices available with premium membership, $12/year.

I’ve barely begun finding fun stuff, but I think I’m off to a good start with the Google Earth app, and TriPeaks Lite. I’m sure that I’ll find more, but I really need to get back to work now. Happy holidays!

What iPhone or iPod touch apps would you recommend for new users?

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So how do you keep from “wasting” time on Twitter? Here’s my advice on how to spend no more than 15 minutes a day on your Twitter account but still reap the rewards, particularly for your work. This is not a good tactic for everyone, but if you or someone you know is very resistant to Twitter and simply needs a manageable plan for tweeting, you can try this at work or home.

First, determine how you’ll most likely access Twitter and interact with others. If you’re old school (like me) and want a large, straightforward interface, use Twitter.com. If you don’t mind downloading, installing and configuring applications on your computer, go for a tool like Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop. If you’re always on the go and love typing on your mobile device, try something like Tweetie for the iPhone or TwitterBerry for the BlackBerry.

Now here’s how to spend your time efficiently and effectively on Twitter:

5 Minutes: Listen, Retweet
Start by “listening” on Twitter to get a sense of what people you’re following are talking about. Scroll down a page or two’s worth of tweets and skim until you see the ones that grab you. Then retweet them by copying their tweet being careful to give them credit. The tweet could be a compelling quote, a useful tip, or a link to a relevant blog post or article.

There are two “accepted” forms of retweeting, and they both seem to be used almost equally. You can put RT in front of the tweet you’ve copied and cite the originator of the tweet like this:

“RT @kellyecrane Great idea: PR consultants, let’s use the #soloprpro hashtag to share information! http://bit.ly/3wkIZu”

or you can credit them at the end of the tweet like this:

“PR consultants, let’s use the #soloprpro hashtag to share information! http://bit.ly/3wkIZu (via @kellyecrane)”

Personally, I much prefer the RT in front because of too many situations where people misread a retweet as a tweet from a person and confusion ensues. For example, one woman retweeted another who said her daughter was in the hospital and was suddenly barraged with messages ranging from “our prayers are with you” to “I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

Retweeting is a way of not only passing along valuable information but also giving kudos to the person tweeting — both great ways of building your following and strengthening Twitter relationships.

5 Minutes: Listen, Respond
Next, listen to see who is speaking about something of interest to you or something you can respond to authoritatively. You should also check who has mentioned you or addressed you in their tweets in your client or by searching for @yourtwittername.

If you find someone tweeting something to you directly, a response is usually expected so reply to them either publicly using @ and their Twitter name, or privately using a direct message (or DM) if you are “friends” with them (meaning you follow them and they follow you back). If you don’t personally know the Twitterer, but you are following them and want to respond to something they’ve said, you can still @ them. While it is perfectly acceptable to @ strangers, be thoughtful about how you address or respond to someone you don’t know.

Here’s an example of a tweet and a response.

“@alizasherman Most of the Seattle neighborhoods have a Twitter account for the neighborhood blog (e.g., @wallyhood for wallyhood.org)”

“@pathable Oh, totally cool. Seattle is so on it! @wallyhood for wallyhood.org? Thanks for the tip.”

5 Minutes: Promote, with Care
Let’s face it — many of us are using Twitter to promote who we are, what we’re doing, and even what we’re selling. There is nothing wrong with promotion on Twitter, but do it with context — think about how the information fits into your Twitter persona.

If you’re known as an SEO expert, you can promote your blog posts about search engine optimization. If you’re a finance expert, tweet regular personal finance tips with a link to articles you’ve written. If you’re a marketing expert, go ahead and tweet a link to your helpful marketing podcast each week. If your retail store is having a sale, that could be tweet-worthy to your followers.

Keep in mind that often the most effective self-promotion can happen when you promote others. As you promote your own articles, blog posts, products, etc., don’t hesitate to mention others that you’ve found worthy of promoting. By sharing the spotlight, you generate good will while still demonstrating your expertise.

After 15 minutes, walk away from the computer or shut down your Twitter application. Keeping your Twitter time under control doesn’t only mean having a plan. You have to exercise some self-discipline as well.

How do you keep your Twitter usage under control?

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The sequel to Tweetie, the Twitter client that earned itself the much-coveted Apple Design Award earlier this year, is on its way to the App Store as you read this.

For the past few weeks I’ve been part of Loren Brichter‘s Tweetie 2 beta program, testing out new features as the former Apple engineer constructed his new Twitter client.

Brichter has rebuilt Tweetie from the ground-up. The sequel incorporates features such as app persistence, offline mode, drafts, threaded conversations, landscape support and much more.

Read on for an in-depth look at what to expect from Tweetie 2.

Look & Feel

While Tweetie 2 incorporates an updated aesthetic, it won’t be difficult for both new and veteran users to get to grips with the app. More so impressive is how the app incorporates a raft of new features without overwhelming the user.

Even after playing with Tweetie 2 for a few weeks, I’m still discovering new functionality. For instance, when replying to a tweet you can now drag down with your finger to “peek” at the original message.

It’s a small feature indeed but finding these kind of miniscule updates brings to mind that satisfied glow we all get when discovering new features in OS X. In essence, skimming through tweets, tapping out messages and finding new folk to follow looks and feels great with Tweetie 2.

Writing & Replying

Composing richer tweets is easier now. Tweetie 2 lays out the different options clearly so that you can quickly add content to your latest 140 character micro-opus. In a given tweet you’re able to access your Twitter address-book and @ messages, search current hashtags, geotag your tweet and add photos too.

Plus, just like with Tweetie on OS X, you can now shrink URLs with the tap of a button. Obsessively attentive readers may have noticed me video tweeting from Big Bird over the past few weeks, that’s because Tweetie 2 also incorporates video tweeting from the 3GS.

There’s also a wealth of options available beyond simply retweeting a message from someone that you’re following. Now you can quote the tweet, post a direct link, translate and even e-mail the tweet to a friend — all without leaving the app itself.

For prolific Twitter users there’s now a drafts manager. This means that you can write and save a stack of tweets for posting later on. I’ve found that it’s particularly handy to have several drafted tweets ready to go just incase you get hit by a case of tweeter’s block.

Browsing the Timeline

The app now features full persistence. This means that if you’re, say, tapping through a prolonged conversation and then you quit the app, you’re able to pick up exactly where you left off. Every single time you exit, the app remembers your place and drops you right back there.

Offline reading has been incorporated too. You’re now able to compose those witty little one-liners while offline, save them to your drafts, and unleash them on the Twittersphere next time you’re online. Even users or tweets you follow, block or favorite while offline will be synced back to the server.

Exactly like the desktop version of Tweetie, there are now threaded conversations, making it much easier to jump into an ongoing discussion and catch up with what you missed. Also, although I don’t use any read this later services, some users will be pleased to note that there’s Read It Later and Instapaper support too.

One of the most ingenious little additions to the timeline view is the “drag to refresh” gesture. Instead of tapping a refresh button, you simply scroll to the top of the timeline and then drag down. It works as intended and, thanks to the gesture combined with a sound-effect and flippy-floppy arrow, it feels tangible and satisfying.

Landscapes & Locations

Not only can you compose a tweet in landscape view, the entire app can be browsed in landscape view. I appreciate that some users may have been waiting for this, however it’s not a feature that I particularly wanted, nor do I make use of now that it’s here. If I could find the button to turn off auto-rotate, I would do so.

Setting that little niggle aside, the Nearby tweets feature has received a much-needed overhaul too. The original Tweetie displayed an odd looking radar animation before loading a basic, but functional, timeline of tweets nearby your current location.

The new Tweetie loads up a Google Map and then pops up tiny speech bubble icons representing all the tweets in your vicinity. It’s an effective way of sorting through local tweets and is a more creative approach than the standard timeline view.

And There’s Even More…

There are details and small features that you almost certainly won’t come across within the first few days of using the app. For instance, Brichter has now included profile editing from within the app.

Another feature that I just picked up on today is the ability to tweet simultaneously from multiple accounts. When composing a tweet you simply tap the “New Tweet” header at the top of the screen and then select the other accounts that you’d like to post the message from.

The Bottom Line

The app is a standalone purchase, as opposed to an update/upgrade. It’ll be available in the App Store soon for only $2.99, just like the original iPhone Tweetie. There’s also an update to the Mac version on the way, however this will be a free update to current owners of Tweetie for OS X.

If you’re unfamiliar with the current state of Twitter clients, we’ve got a great roundup here on TheAppleBlog. It’s worth noting that the original Tweetie came out on top as one of the top clients.

The new app definitely gets a thumbs-up from me, although I’d be interested to know which of you will be upgrading to Tweetie 2 when it comes out.

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