It’s Almost SXSW. What Are You Using to Get Your Twitter On?

SXSW begins this coming Friday, 7 March, and it will mark the first anniversary of Twitter's explosion on the scene. This past weekend, Twitter was down again, but this time, it was a planned outage to prep the servers for the predicted hammering of their system when SXSW convenes. Of course, you can always continue on Tweeting from the web or your IM client, but an entire cottage industry has sprung up around Twitter since SXSW '07, giving you tons more options and features to choose from.

My new favorite Twitter client is Twhirl. Available in both Mac and Windows flavors on Adobe AIR, Twhirl is a full-featured desktop client you can customize to your every whim. Twhirl allows you to simultaneously crosspost to Jaiku as well as Pownce (convenient for the inevitable Twitter outages), and happily pulls in Tweets you may have missed when your laptop went to sleep during a riveting panel discussion. Twhirl has filters for full timeline, replies, archive, and directs, and allows you to view the timeline of any other Tweeter linked in an @user message without ever going back out to the web. If it only pulled Pownce and Jaiku messages IN as well, it would probably be the perfect client.

Tweetr is another AIR Twitter client, but it lacks many of the features that Twhirl has. The current release is missing shortened URLs and notifications, but it does include the ability to upload files up to 10mb in size as well as send images directly from your webcam to Twitter. If you need the capability to send files, this might be a better client choice.

Snitter has been around for a while now, and has many of the same features of Twhirl, with auto-updates, filters, and auto notifications. When it comes to a desktop Twitter app running on AIR, Snitter would probably be my second choice but for the annoying Growl-esque notifies it pops up. While Twhirl pops up messages at dock level, Snitter acts like Grown and posts them at the top of the screen. Especially with a huge backlog of Tweets to pull in, it renders the top part of your desktop unusable without even the close box Growl gives you.

One more option is using your cell phone and Utterz to Tweet. They've made big changes since they were profiled on StartupSquad last October. Besides losing the goofy cow-print logo (although the Be Herd! tagline is still there), they've moved beyond being a Facebook app to being a microblogging platform in their own right. Utterz can be sent from your cell phone via SMS or email, and you can also create Utterz right from your desktop if you have a webcam and microphone. The platform allows you to post not only to Twitter, but also to LiveJournal, Blogger, WordPress, Drupal, and Movable Type platforms, Tumblr, Twitxr, Flickr, and Yahoo Groups. Utterz provides the capability to upload pictures, videos, and audio entries as well as text entries.

Of course, if you need a little bit more entertainment in your Twitter use next week, there are always a few extras. You can send and receive Tweets while you are in Second Life with Twitterbox. Twitterbox is a free script that works in-world, popping up your incoming Tweets, and allowing you to send outgoing messages right from the Second Life chat box.

And for those wanting to play along at home (or during off hours), Wordy Birdie is a game based on Twitter. Select 10 words you think that your Twitter contacts will use often (the 100 most frequently used English words are off-limits), and win points every time your contacts do as expected.

Keeping in mind that Twitter is reducing the number of calls any apps can make to the API in an attempt to NOT crash during SXSW, you may not want to move totally over to a client until after the onslaught. I'm finding that Twhirl for playing catch-up with my regular IM feed works great. Or at least, it will until the inevitable crash.

For more Twitter apps, visit the Twitter Fan Wiki .