More Impressions on Twitter Clients

Back here I wrote about my search for my 'perfect' Twitter client. Since then I've tried Seesmic and now MetroTwit which is my current favourite. Having not gotten on very well with Adobe AIR based clients (probably due to my own expectations rather than there being anything 'bad' about them as such), I've tended to look for clients written in the technologies that I like working with, WPF or Silverlight. Both Seesmic Desktop and MetroTwit tick those boxes.

So I'm now happy enough with my chosen Twitter client and even the Twitter web interface isn't as bad as it once was. Although I don't tend to use it much as I'm too keen on closing web browser Windows, especially when I've finished reading something on one tab and forget that I want to keep another tab open, my bad. So using a client works well for me as I don't accidentally close it, although I might start ignoring it as the day progresses.

But there is still one thing that is lacking. Twitter lists are very useful, not just for creating a list on a given theme such as 'Devon tweeters' for instance, but also as a means of privately filtering the stream to view only those tweeps that you are most interested in or interact with most.

While list management is part of the Twitter web client it doesn't provide much in the way of managing the list beyond adding/removing. All I can do is view who is in the list, it doesn't tell me if I follow that tweep and if they follow me and when that tweep last tweeted information; that would be really useful when trying to keep a list up to date and relevant to the topic.

Of course, I can click on each entry to find out when that tweep last tweeted but it still doesn't tell me if I'm following and if that person follows me. Ideally, I'd like an 'at a glance' overall view of the tweeps in the list which lets me drill into an individuals stream if I want. I've searched but can't find anything, perhaps I'll have to write my own...