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"TweetDeck and Tweetie are at the top of the Twitter client food chain, respectively holding the number two and three spots after the web (according to these stats). But until now TweetDeck has dominated the Twitter client market without having a mobile presence.\nNow that they've penetrated the mobile market with a darn good iPhone app \u2014 released today \u2014 and plenty of buzz, TweetDeck has flipped the iPhone hierarchy of Twitter apps upside down. With the new mobile entrant available sans a price a tag (that's right, it's free!), we thought we should pit the newbie against the seasoned competitor to see who comes out on top.\nUser Experience\n\nTweetie has been around the block for some time now, so the application's interface has become second nature to most of us. We love the look and the overall feel, and the ability to select from three different themes. It doesn't get much better appearance-wise, but finding certain features can be tricky.\nWhat Tweetie gets right is a clean one-column tab layout for quick access to all tweets, mentions, messages, favorites, and custom searches. It's simple and straightforward. What they could do better is make it easier to find buried treasures like the ability to post a link to a tweet, email a link, and repost links in other tweets. Bottom line, though, is that Tweetie is feature-rich without being overwhelming to users.\n\nTweetDeck certainly breaks new ground when it comes to the user interface of their app. Instead of the very standard one column approach, they actually try to emulate their desktop experience with multiple columns. Columns can be manipulated by using the swipe touch maneuver on the iPhone. Plus, to better view tweets in each column and interact with them, just swipe across the screen and select the appropriate column. You can pop back out into the entire column view via the arrow at the top left, or sift through columns one at time using the arrow in the right-hand corner.\nTweetDeck's iPhone app design is pretty bold given that mobile users have become accustomed to cycling through replies, mentions, and searches using the navigation tabs at the bottom of most apps. We think power TweetDeck users will love it, though novice Twitter users will find it a bit jarring, especially since seeing mentions and DMs requires the user to create those columns.\nFor simplicity alone, we have to give the edge to Tweetie. We love TweetDeck's bold new column design (and you probably will too), but it's not user-friendly enough for the everyday Twitterer. Beginners beware.\nFeatures and Functions\nAs noted above, Tweetie's most sophisticated features are slightly hidden, but once you find them, you'll be in awe of what this mobile application lets you accomplish. Should you find a tweet particularly interesting you can favorite it, retweet it, post a tweet with a link to the tweet, or email it on to a friend.\n\nWe've gotten so spoiled by the fact that you can also do user look ups, add your geo-location to tweets, view nearby tweets based on your GPS location, check out trending topics on Twitter and save them as searches, and manage multiple accounts, that we'll certainly miss some of these features that TweetDeck doesn't support. Sure you'll find that you can add your location to tweets, have columns dedicated to saved searches, and manage multiple accounts, but TweetDeck has yet to bake in trending topics, the ability to view nearby tweets, or posting links to tweets.\nTweetDeck's killer feature, apart from its hip design, is its ability to automatically sync with its desktop counterpart, which essentially means that you can take your preferred Twitter experience, complete with custom columns of friends and search results, with you without any hiccups. It's the perfect way to keep up on what's most important to you, without having to filter through the minutiae you don't want to see.\n\nThe beauty of the sync feature is universal access and two way sync, so should you add custom columns, which can include advance searches, to TweetDeck from the iPhone app, you can select to sync and the changes will be reflected in your desktop version.\n\nYou're also bound to appreciate the updates feature, which essentially emulates audio and visual growl notifications in the desktop version for new activity in your TweetDeck columns. This is pretty revolutionary for a Twitter mobile, and we think you'll love that you can tap the updates button to view and select updates per column, and/or just watch the notifications roll in. The only downside here is that if you've got a lot of columns and active searches, you're likely to see updates a plenty (though you can turn this off in the settings tab).\nThough we think Tweetie has a number of great deeper features that we really enjoy, it's hard not to be blown over by the custom columns, groups, notifications, and sync functionality. There's too much good stuff in this release not to award this category to TweetDeck.\nComparison Shopping\n\nOkay this category is a no-brainer. We all know that Tweetie comes with a $2.99 price tag, while the brand new TweetDeck for iPhone is free of charge. Most of us with iPhones decided long ago that Tweetie was worth the price tag, but now that TweetDeck has released their mobile app, and we know Seesmic Desktop will follow suit with one of their own, it seems as if the days of paid Twitter apps are limited.\nClearly you can get all the great features and functions you want with zero cost, which makes us wonder if Tweetie, and the host of other paid Twitter apps, have any extra tricks up their sleeve. For now, though, the clear winner when it comes to affordability is the fancy and free TweetDeck.\nFor Twitter on your iPhone pick...\nFor novelty alone, we have to say that TweetDeck is the clear winner. We're super impressed with the fact that we can merge our mobile Twitter preferences with our more stationary ones, and we love how much information each column can pack. We're doubled over with the excitement at having access to our TweetDeck columns in our pocket with zero out of pocket expense, and we think you'll really enjoy the app too.\nOf course, we're still big Tweetie fans and do think that Twitterers that are just getting started will prefer the simpler application design and quick access to mentions and DMs. We look forward to seeing what they can bring to the table next. There's plenty of time in the coming months for a rematch!"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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