Tapulous, the developers of the highly popular Tap Tap Revenge game for the iPhone and iPod touch, released a native, location aware Twitter client for the iPhone tonight. Twinkle (iTunes link) already existed as a native application on jail broken iPhones before, but Apple only added it to the official iTunes store tonight. While there are some oddities in the way Twinkle works, the location awareness makes it a worthwhile addition to the ever growing pool of Twitter clients.
Features
Twinkle is a very capable Twitter client in its own right, and while it isn’t quite as fully featured as Twitterific, it does have some features Twitterific doesn’t have, including the ability to follow new users right from the application.
Unlike Twitterific, though, Twinkle does not have a built-in browser, so clicking on a URL closes the application and takes you to Safari instead.
You can also attach a picture to your own messages, but doing so crashed my phone twice in a row before it finally worked. Once it worked, the picture was uploaded to Tapulous’ Twinkle page and added to the tweet as a link shortened by snipurl. Twinkle users don’t have to click on the URL, but can see the picture right in the application.
Location Aware, but for Twinkle Users Only
One limitation of Twinkle, however, is that it is only aware of other Twinkle users in your vicinity and does not display tweets from ‘regular’ Twitter users in the location aware part of the app. As such, the application will only become really useful once more people start using it as their default client.
One more Twinkle only feature is, strangely, your profile picture. For some reason, the location aware part of Twinkle does not display your regular Twitter profile picture. Instead, you have to set one specifically for Twinkle.
Verdict
Besides that the user interface could be a bit snappier at times, Twinkle is a very cool addition to the growing pool of iPhone Twitter clients. It’s also a great way to discover local Twitter users you might not have been following yet.
The authors also clearly have a sense of humor: when Twitter fails to respond to its update requests, the app displays a little warning sign with a whale tail in it.
