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Twitter app alternatives Ever since Twitter capped the number of users any third-party Android app at 100,000, it seems unwise to commit actual money toward a Twitter app whose future is so uncertain. So if you’re unhappy with the official software – and plenty of people are – you’re probably best off with one of these free options.
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Plume Formerly “Touiteur,” before Twitter cracked down on naming rights, Plume is a pleasant, functional and reasonably attractive Twitter client that offers a generally more pleasant experience than the clunky official app.
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Carbon Carbon routinely wins praise for being the prettiest Android Twitter client out there, and the visual design is, indeed, striking. A recent overhaul fixed some of the problems with what could be, at times, a somewhat unintuitive UI, but beware – Carbon has apparently run up against the dreaded 100,000-user limit, so you’ll either have to find some way around the problem.
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Seesmic Seesmic has been around for quite some time, and it remains a solid choice, particularly if you’d like some Facebook with your Twitter. The interface is a little dated, but the core functionality is responsive and easy to use.
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Ubersocial Ubersocial is a lot like its fellow oldie-but-goodie Seesmic, only more so – the interface is even more bare-bones, but the functionality is great, with in-built Facebook and Gchat integration and lots of other third-party stuff. There’s even a fairly extensive photo editor buried in there.
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Twidere This one’s for the open-source crowd – Twidere is that too-rare free app that doesn’t pack in the ads and in-app purchases or skimp on functionality. It’s not half bad to look at, either, although the UI still seems grounded in the Ice Cream Sandwich era.
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Hootsuite This is a little bit more of a specialized inclusion, but the serious-business social media users out there should look no further. Hootsuite is designed with a lot of features to cater to the professional Twitter crowd, like tweet scheduling and analytics.
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Tweedle In contrast to Hootsuite, Tweedle is aiming for the slimmed-down, simplified end of the market – users that just want an attractive UI that lets them handle the basics in an intuitive way. At this, it succeeds completely.
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Echofon The venerable Echofon doesn’t really stand out from the crowd any more these days, but that’s OK – it’s still a completely workable alternative to something like Plume or the official app. Plus, it’s got cross-platform sync, so you can stay up to date on the same platform, if you’re a Mac or iOS user as well.
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Branches Branches is a sort of Zen Twitter app, with a highly simplified interface and an innovative system that groups “noisy” users’ tweets together into a single entry, resulting in a “quieter” timeline. For a certain school of Twitter user, Branches might prove highly attractive.
In Pictures: The 9 best free Twitter apps for Android
10 Photos
Sigh…I miss TweetDeck. Nevertheless, these apps are still very good indeed.
