In the absence (for now) of Tweetie for iPad, we’ve been getting acquainted with TweetDeck’s native iPad app, which does a great job of letting you manage your Twitter life on Apple’s tablet.
It mirrors the desktop version of TweetDeck, sorting tweets into columns for easier reading. However, it’s been interesting to see other apps pop up on the App Store that take a different approach to iPad tweeting.
Tabloids is a good example. It claims to generate news that you want, by scanning recent tweets from the people you follow, and grabbing the articles that they link to. The idea is a real-time aggregator of hot stories from your online social group.
However, more impressive still is ch@tter (okay, apart from the name). It also scans your tweetstream, categorising and ranking the most popular hashtags, retweets and links, then presenting them in a visually whizzy interface. It also works in photos of your key contacts, making it faster to see what they’ve been tweeting about.
Tabloids costs £1.79, while ch@tter is £2.99. Neither will replace your general Twitter app, since they’re about browsing stuff rather than actually tweeting. Even so, they’re a sign that when it comes to perusing news on your iPad, your social stream could be part of the picture, alongside apps from traditional media outlets.
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