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Seesmic was one of the first Twitter clients on Android to change the game, but as you know the game changed rapidly and developers must adapt. Unfortunately for Seesmic they never could. With stiff competition from tons of corporate-driven Twitter clients like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and more, being as stagnant as they were wasn’t a good strategy to stay in the game.
The latter of those examples, Hootsuite, has acquired Seesmic in a deal for an undisclosed amount. Seesmic’s announcement appears to suggest that the service will soon be put to bed as a standalone offering. Instead, it looks like Hootsuite will integrate its staff and technology into its own operations and continue to be a top competitor in this tough space.
Initially, support for both products will continue, however we will soon be bringing everyone into one great platform. We’re working on ways to make the transition as smooth as possible so keep an eye out for updates.
But Hootsuite has blossomed into a great product that, like a fine wine, has only gotten better with time. And all of that rhymes. So fret not — despite our soft spot for Seesmic in our hearts, it was clear that they were struggling and this move will help a great product grow bigger than it already has. Give the Android app one last download for old times’ sake. [Seesmic]
Seesmic is still my preferred mobile (Android) app. I use it in conjunction with Boid. If Boid ever got a widget and proper notifications, I would uninstall Seesmic entirely. Someone needs to step up and make a fully functional client so I don’t have to keep skipping around.
I strongly recommend Plume. It will almost certainly replace the two you’ve mentioned given what I’ve seen. The beta will enable you to try the paid features for free for an unlimited amount of time if you’re ok with a few unobtrusive ads on the bottom of the screen.
http://levelupstudio.com/betatest/index.php?board=3.0
Thanks for the heads up. I have Plume installed on my tablet but didn’t know or checked if they had a phone version. I just installed it so it will take getting used to but so far so good.
Glad to hear it. Just an FYI, I haven’t had much success getting my questions or feature requests answered in the beta forum, but IIRC their they watch their twitter pretty closely if you feel compelled to interact with them for any reason.
Sorry to be blunt, but Hootsuite, Seesmic, Ubersocial, Tweetdeck, Tweetdark, Twicca, and Twitter are all sub-par twitter clients. I’ve tried them all, so unless they’ve made extremely dramatic improvements over the past 3 months, they just don’t cut it (and I know for a fact most of them haven’t made many improvements because I check their changelogs and follow most of them on Twitter).
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Tweetcaster is a decent choice, but the very clear winner is Plume, especially after their development blitz that started about 4 to 6 months back. Heck, even if you don’t want to buy the paid version of Plume you can jump on the beta which gets the great new features before the market releases and has all the features enabled. The only difference is it comes with some ads.
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The only app that I really see competing with Plume (so long as they keep improving) is possibly issimo which is an unreleased app that was sounding quite amazing until the developer got bored, never launched it and started pursuing other hobbies (really a shame :/)
All those apps offer something different for everyone. And try and get Tweetcaster and Plume on the web. Don’t just denounce these clients because there are other decent Android clients out there. It’s more than that.
To be honest Quentyn, most of these apps are trying to offer the same thing, which is a great Twitter client. Since I’ve tried the ones I denounced (and the ones I praised), why shouldn’t I share my experience publicly? This blog is about helping Android users, yes? Well as it so happens, the reason I typed that first post up is because I have personally done some time-intensive testing with many of the available Twitter clients and I have personally determined that many are subpar and also seen that there are a few shooting stars.
I’ll give you that some of the clients excel in different areas, and if users need a very specific feature then it’s up to them to find that feature and stick with that app. What I’m suggesting is that Plume is (currently) the best app and the others aren’t as good (Tweetcaster is close) overall.
If you need me to provide a 1000 word run down of the testing process I’ve gone through I can do it, but honestly most people aren’t going to read that, so it ends up NOT accomplishing my goal or yours (again, we’re assuming that the goal here is to help Android users and save them a bit of time).
EDIT: I guess I’m not sure what you mean by “try to get Tweetcaster and Plume on the web” so I can’t really respond to that.
What I meant was that Hootsuite also has a web service for corporate users who monitor and manage Twitter accounts throughout the day. It also handles a lot of corporate-driven features like scheduled Tweets, superior multiple account management, and more.
I’m not saying it’s wrong to suggest other clients, but to say they’re subpar Twitter clients is just asinine. A lot of people get value out of Hootsuite that you probably didn’t even know about. McDonald’s, Virgin, Sony for starters. Plume and Tweetcaster don’t have a lot of features that are important to some users, so to some they’re not better clients at all. It’s all relative. Just saying.
Take a look at this feature set and tell me if TweetCaster and Plume offer them: http://hootsuite.com/features/social-networks