Currently, there are at least a dozen Twitter web/desktop clients out there and the popular ones includes TweetDeck, Twhirl, Tweetie for Mac and iTweet. Many Twitter users love using these clients because they offer users rich and interactive features which are way better than the original Twitter.com even though there are some APIs limitations.
TwitHive, a recently-launched fully interactive Twitter web client has joined the ‘competitive market’ too. Developed by Yong Su Kim, a notable web entrepreneur with over 14 years of experience in establishing Internet start-ups, TwitHive is actually a multi-channel web dashboard for Twitter. Currently in beta, it enables users to monitor and interact with the ‘Twitter Hive Mind’ by allowing users to create channels to monitor Twitter across multiple accounts and use powerful Twitter tools to interact and manage Twitter contacts.
Dubbed as the ‘fastest Twitter web client’ till date according to several satisfied users, TwitHive is developed using a fast AJAX based service with minimal web page loads. For certain reasons, a handful of Twitterers tend to have multiple accounts probably one for business purposes and the other for personal use. This is when TwitHive comes in really handy whereby you can manage multiple accounts in an efficient and easy way. Although this idea has already been implemented by other Twitter web clients for quite a long time ago, but at least it’s certainly very beneficial to those who wants a better management of their accounts.
Other pretty exciting features includes the ability to track trends and brands mentions using customized search channels to track keyword mentions and an integrated Google News and Blog Search. Of course, basic necessities of a micro-blogging community such as one click Re-Tweet replies, built-in URL shortening, Follow/Unfollow users from multiple accounts with one click are available. Even though users are required to punch in their Twitter credentials in order to use the service, however TwitHive assures that it will ‘keep your passwords secure and safe’ all thanks to the OAuth based authentication via Twitter’s servers.
With the number of Twitter web/desktop clients on the rise, I believe that there will a spike in increase of users abandoning their the use of the original Twitter platform and move on to the more ‘advanced’ web clients which offers rich and interactive features. Most likely this will affect Twitter’s traffic and one dire consequence it might face is that there will be lesser revenue if the folks at Twitter intend to place ads on the site.