Many social media services are surfacing and impressing us with their usefulness so it’s very hard to maintain our presence in only one service these days. Updating all of these the easy way has been possible to intelligent, time-saving and work-reducing iPhone Twitter apps like Posterous.
It not only updates your services depending on your commands of which services get updated, but it also stores all your files and links, with an email (so you can update by cell phone with an email to post@posterous.com). So by emailing Posterous any of those videos and pictures you have stashed in, say, your phone, you can back your files up, start your personal photoblog, or use Posterous to host your illustrated tweets.
Recently, Posterous actually tightened its Twitter integration by opening post.ly (the URL shortener for Posterous users’ blog posts) as a Twitter-updating and file-uploading web app, which brings you the best of Posterous capabilities, along with a character counter, a textbox to add a post description, and the speed of uplading files through your web browser.
It’s great to see Posterous expand its services, especially to such popular ones as Twitter but are there Twitter apps that go the other way around and integrate Posterous as the picture-hosting service? Posterous has a list for apps that post images on their service, but some of them were paid apps. Let’s examine the best iPhone Twitter apps that do the same thing for free on the iPhone.
Twitterrific, version 2.1.3
The free version of Twitterrific [iTunes link, website] is incredibly popular (among other popular ones is Tweetdeck which hosts its blog at Posterous, but strangely, doesn’t post pictures to Posterous), has very complete and extraordinary search functions (search one or many words, by screen names or places) and customizable tapping shortcuts, shows trends, supports multiple accounts and posting pictures to yfrog, TwitPic/TwitVid, Twitgoo/TwitVid and Posterous.It also has a shortcut-friendly Mac desktop client so you don’t have to double-read your friends’ updates.
Although its minimalistic approach serves well for the everyday Twitterer, its Posterous integration is too simplistic in that it doesn’t update your Posterous blog with the tweet, just the picture.
If you use Posterous’ Autopost feature to update across all your social networking sites, then you will see just the picture everywhere, with no caption, just the text “Untitled.”
Twizzle, version 1.6.3
Twizzle [iTunes link, website] was recently featured in-depth for its power features, many of which are found in the best paid iPhone Twitter apps. Its clutter-free, ad-free interface lets you access your tweets from multiple accounts, mentions, DMs, and Favorites horizontally. Its search function lets you jump to any Twitter user’s tweets, Trending Topics and even your Saved Searches.
Like Twitterrific, Twizzle unfortunately only updates the picture, with no actual tweet on your Posterous blog. It does notify you of which Twitter client you used to post the picture though.
Since it’s a pretty new app, Twizzle may be just trying to get the word out there about its its truly full-featured free app, but it’d be even better if it also included the tweet on the blog post.
Twittelator, version 3.6
This app [iTunes link, website] will impress you with its space-saving icons, ability to customize the background color, text font and size, and browser other users’ templates in case you want more than the 3 native themes. It also uploads to 9 different photo-hosting sites (Moby, Pikchur, TwitPic, Yfrog, TwitGoo, TweetPhoto, WordPress, Twitlens and you guessed it, Posterous), 2 audio-hosting sites (Moby, Posterous) and 5 video-hosting sites (Yfrog, Moby, TwitVid, Posterous, Pikchur). Most other features in the Settings tab are Twittelator Pro features only, which you don’t need to post your tweet as a title on your Posterous blog post.
SimplyTweet Lite, version 2.5.1
SimplyTweet Lite [iTunes link, website] is a simple app with elegant Posterous integration (that even Posterous recognized), plus additional features. It actually recommends Posterous for your longer tweets (there’s an option in Settings just for the purpose of setting or not Posterous as your blog in case 140 characters aren’t enough for you), lets you save items to your Instapaper account (just like in Twitterrific and Twittelator) and has customizable buttons for different replying functions. When you post pictures on SimplyTweet, Posterous is entirely updated (with your tweet as post title, as well as post body comment) and even tagged.
These four powerful apps make posting all your random pictures (or videos) you take on your iPhone to Posterous while you tweet a breeze (they could be near perfection for me if they had offline capabilities for me to catch up on my friends’ tweets while I commute). Which ones do you prefer and why?
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