Big Love for a Small Feature – ‘In reply to’ in Tweetie 2
There are times when a big, fancy, powerful new feature in an iPhone app will knock your socks off. More often than not though, I think there are smaller, more workman-like features that turn out to be the real standouts, because they ‘re so useful so often.
The ‘In reply to ‘ feature in the Tweetie 2 iPhone Twitter client app is a great example of one of these ‘small ‘ standouts. When I first noticed it I thought it looked cool, but it didn ‘t blow me away. Now, after weeks of using the app, it does. In fact today I tweeted about how I miss it when using desktop Twitter apps.
It ‘s that handy, that useful “ and just a very clever feature. It ‘s just so cool to see a tweet you find interesting, wonder what it ‘s about, and not have to wade back through the timeline of someone who was @ mentioned in it to figure out what it was a response to. To be able to just tap that lovely little button and see the flow of the conversation is great.
What are some of your favorite ‘small ‘ features that inspire big love?
I agree, I've found this little button to be very useful and also long for it when I'm using other twitter apps. I've discovered in Tweetie for Mac that if you double-click a tweet, you can also see any previous conversation – that is if the person actually used the "reply" function.
I find a lot of people just start a new tweet and direct to someone, rather than actually using the reply button. These non-replies don't get connected to the thread so there's no way to follow along without wading back through. Also, people who use text messages to reply also don't seem to get threaded; they're treated as new messages.
Just little quirks, though it's more Twitter's side of things, that make the conversation view (in-reply-to) a little inconsistent sometimes. But when it works, it's great!
That's what I was gonna say… that sounds like the double click threaded conversation feature in Tweetie Mac
Yup, I do use the double-click in Tweetie for Mac, but for whatever reason I don't remember it's there as often as I do on the iPhone.
I love that feature too. My favorite is swiping a Tweet in Tweetie 2 in order to mark something as Favorite or to mark as 'Read Later' in Instapaper. Not that I ever read anything later though.
I have also found the "swipe the top bar to return to the timeline" feature in Tweetie 2 to be another great "little" touch. In fact, I find myself trying to use it in every other app, much to my chagrin…
Are you aware this feature has been around in other apps such as simplytweet for a LONG time now?
Hawk pointed this out out to me about SimplyTweet in particular earlier on Twitter. Thing is, for me, the UI of some of those really feature-rich apps is not so strong – and I don't notice these clever features as much because of it.
Nice feature, but my favorite is Nearby. I’ve used it at Titan’s games to tweet trash talk to other fans. I’ve used it at home to see what neighbors are tweeting as well. I really think this feature is gonna lead to some great games.
That one is very nicely implemented in Tweetie 2.