The Best Twitter Apps of 2009

 
Welcome to Twitter Tuesday. Every Tuesday we will post about Twitter. Stop by for advice and how to's for marketing professionals. Every other week we will post our AppQuest Edition featuring a review of Twitter applications.

For the last three months, we’ve been reviewing various online Twitter applications. We’ve covered five different subjects so far. Now that 2009 is coming to an end, I thought it would be a good idea to go back and look at our picks. Were we correct with our picks? Did they deliver the way we expected? Have we changed our minds from our original picks? In some cases, the sites worked better than expected and in other cases, we ended up using one of the other sites.

Back in September, we kicked off Twitter Tuesday: AppQuest Edition with a look at Twitter scheduling tools. What was our verdict?

Twitter Scheduling Apps

THEN: Overall, Twaitter came closest to my wish list. It did almost everything I wanted it to do. First and foremost, it’s very easy to use and understand. While it does a lot, it doesn’t overwhelm you. The designers really thought through the issues and how to solve them. But in the final analysis, I will go with Tweet-U-Later for one reason: It is the only app I found that makes it easy to have recurring tweets on the same day. When working with followers in different time zones this is essential for me. Coming in at the bottom of the list is Dynamic Tweets. Too many of the options that they want you to pay for can be found on other sites for free. Social Oomph needs to rethink their site design. It’s too cluttered and every link feels like it takes you to a sales page for the pay version. There’s a great looking user interface on Twit Robot, it’s just too bad programming glitches prevent you from using them.

NOW: Twaitter has become my first choice to schedule tweets. It’s easy to use and allows you to schedule Tweets at any time across any time zone. They disabled the ability to do recurring tweets due to Twitter concerns about spamming. These are valid concerns, but that doesn’t mean you can’t schedule recurring posts individually. In leu of a recurring tweet option, it would be nice to see a way to duplicate a tweet you want to repost. The RSS feed manager is still coming soon, but there is no word on when that will be implemented. 

Twitter Follower Management Apps

THEN: Refollow and Tweepular were the hands-down winners. Refollow slightly edged out Tweepular due to the variety of filtering options and the ability to tag and comment on user accounts. This is a great site for beginners as well as super users. Tweepular’s colorful design, broad functionality and suggested user tab make it a strong runner up. This is still a wide open field as the top two sites are miles ahead of the rest. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more contenders in this arena soon that offer even more features.

NOW: After trying Refollow for a few days, I found that it didn’t work as well as I thought it did. When I went to look at the number of people that weren’t following me back, the list of people was never as big as I would find on other sites. This leads me to believe that it doesn’t pull in all your followers so you can manage them properly. Instead, I’ve turned more and more to Tweepular. It doesn’t have as many features, but I know it works like it should.

Twitter Profile Analyzing App

THEN: While TweetStats and Twitalyzer both had very useful analytics, neither came close to the depth and variety of Twitter Analyzer. Twitalyzer’s benchmarking tool is a great way to set goals for yourself. Combined with Twitter Analyzer, you have all the software you need to mount a Twitter campaign and measure its success. Because the analytics are live, you can make course adjustments on the fly to optimize your Tweeting.

NOW: Twitter Analyzer is still the best Twitter profile analyzer out there. It shows amazing amounts of analytics and information. They sometimes lose data, but some of that could depend on the whims of Twitter. They are still going to release two sections – Trends and Fun – but there’s no mention of what they will contain. I’m not complaining, though. For a free app, it’s one of the best available. In fact, it’s my favorite free Twitter app of 2009.

Twitter Polling Apps

THEN: While there were some sites that were easy-to-use, one trick ponies, it became clear it was worth putting a little extra effort into polls with the sites that offer more functionality. Twtpoll edged out Twttrstrm as it provided nearly all the features we wanted, while still being simple to use and visually appealing.

NOW: There is no comparison here – Twtpoll is hands down the best. The simple fact that it allows you to create 17 types of polls puts it in a class by itself. We’ve used it twice ourselves to poll our followers, and it didn’t disappoint. Check out this Twtpoll on the best ad agency blogs (which we just happened to have won). 

Twitter File Sharing Apps

THEN: TwitFS and FileTweet did the best, with TwitFS ultimately having the best features. It’s simple to use, accepts the largest files and allows you to share the file across multiple networks. Best of all, it works without any problems. FileTweet is good for a quick send if you don’t care about sending the file again or being able to delete it from the site’s servers. FileSocial is also recommended for its ability to view the files without having to download them. 

NOW: TwitFS is still really great. The shear amount of features is still pretty amazing, like the ability to email from the page, view the shared content online, download, html code to post your shared item on Twitter, blogs, Facebook, MySpace and message boards along with a page url and on-page embedding code. Next to Twitter Analyzer, it’s my favorite free Twitter app of 2009.

Looking into the new year, what are some free Twitter apps you would like us to review?