Ever since Apple released iPhone OS 3.0, Twitter addicts have been waiting for their favorite iPhone application to implement the OS’s new “push” technology which could deliver messages as pop-ups on the homescreen. Today, the first app to implement this feature has arrived, but it’s not one of the popular apps as you may have expected. Instead, the brand-new app iTwitter (iTunes link) has beaten out all the other major clients to become the first push-enabled Twitter application for the iPhone.
About iTwitter
Despite the number of iPhone Twitter applications out there, most users have narrowed down the list of clients they use on a regular basis to one or two of the most popular apps like Tweetie, Tweetdeck, Twitterfon, Twitterific, Twinkle, Twittelator, Tweetsville, or something else entirely. Since these clients already have notoriety and a solid user base, we expected to see one of them emerge as the first Twitter client to introduce “push” technology. Imagine our surprise then when another application, a newcomer called iTwitter, beat out all the rest to achieve this claim to fame.
Having just launched yesterday in the iTunes App Store, iTwitter is a robust Twitter application which offers all the features you would expect including access to your friends’ timeline, direct messages, mentions (@ replies), favorites, following and follower lists, and a compose screen. Plus, it also throws in several extra features that may put it one notch above your current favorite app like its ability to display nearby tweets, integration with TwitPic (including an inline viewer), a fast re-tweet option, a landscape keyboard, custom searches and the ability to save them, and conversational threaded tweets.
Here Comes Pushed Tweets!
However, the feature which everyone cares about is not currently listed in the app’s description on its iTunes page: PUSH. But a few hours ago, the app’s dev team tweeted the big news: “iTwitter push notification is working perfectly now, enjoy it guys!”
The pushed messages arrive as pop-up messages on your homescreen, just like they do in other push-enabled applications like instant messaging clients Beejive and IM+. You can choose to “close” the notification message or you can tap “view” to launch iTwitter and view the tweet.
Unfortunately, there is a drawback to the way iTwitter implements the push technology. It pushes all mentions and direct messages…but only if the person sending them is using iTwitter, too. Sigh. So close, yet so far. We don’t know why they would implement such a serious restriction and it is quite the disappointment. We guess the only way to work around this issue is to convince all our friends to ditch their current app and start using iTwitter instead.
At the moment, iTwitter is free, but if it remains the only available push client for too long, it wouldn’t be a surprise if they started charging. Better grab it now just in case!
Update: As one commenter noted below, iTwitter isn’t technically the first app to implement push Twitter messages – IM+ is. However, IM+ is more well-known as an instant messaging client, not as a standalone Twitter client. iTwitter is the first Twitter-only client to do push, an important distinction since many people prefer using a dedicated app with a lot more features.
