Review: Tweeki 2 brings the best of Twitter to Pokki

Tweeki 2 Tweeki is one of the best Twitter clients around, offering for free what many others want you to pay for.

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I'm always on the hunt for truly great Twitter clients for the PC desktop, and one of my finds from last year was Tweeki. Despite some drawbacks, I was impressed with Tweeki's mobile-like interface, and deemed it an excellent client for anyone with one Twitter user. Shortly after, Tweeki, which ran on the Pokki platform, shut down due to Twitter API changes, and has re-emerged as Tweeki 2, a whole new iteration of the Pokki Twitter app.

Tweeki shows one column at a time on a simple mobile-like interface.

The change becomes apparent before you even log in. Tweeki 2 is based on a new partnership with Intel, which means you must create an Intel Services Identity before you can start using Tweeki. Once you do, you can use this single log in to bring up all your Twitter users on any PC, including unread counts for timeline, mentions, and DMs. This feature works surprisingly well, but it's important to note than when logged in on two PCs at once, actions you perform on one PC, such as switching between users, will also affect Tweeki on the other PC.

Once logged in, you'll become acquainted with the new Tweeki interface. In a strictly sized window (you cannot change the size), you'll find six different columns: timeline, mentions, DMs, lists, profile, and search. In addition, a compose button opens up a compose bar which you can hide when not using it, and another button on the left opens up the users and settings menu. For here you can add users, switch between users, sign out of the current user, and access the notification settings.

Just like the old version of Tweeki, here too you can choose between badge and banner notifications, but Tweeki 2 makes them available for lists as well. Speaking of notifications, these will only pop up or show for the user you're currently on, which makes it much easier to manage multiple accounts than the older version. General unread counts for all your accounts are available on the profile menu as well.

View images and watch videos inside Tweeki while reading your feed.

Things have changed in the reading front too. Whereas before your own tweets and mentions were marked in green and orange on your timeline, these are now highlighted by a color bar to the left of the tweet, and while they're somewhat less obvious, they're definitely colorblind friendly.  Your own username, when mentioned, appears in a different color too. Images and videos are now available to view inline, providing a self contained and enjoyable reading environment.

The new compose window is much less obtrusive, and includes a spell checker to avoid those embarrassing typos. The first iteration of Tweeki had some problems with link shortening, and I'm sad to say that the situation is now worse. There is no built-in way to shorten links in Tweeki, and any links used stay in their long form, using up most of your character allowance. If you have an easily available way to shorten links this won't be a problem, but if you don't, this could turn the Tweeki experience into a pretty uncomfortable one.

Tweeki 2 can perform almost any Twitter action you can think of. This includes browsing profiles, following and unfollowing, creating, editing and deleting lists, and performing various searches. The Live Stream search option lets you view search results as they're published without lifting a finger. It's easy to save searches to reuse later, as well as to browse some world trends.

Profile view is a great addition, and the only place where links get (unnecessarily) shortened.

The old Tweeki had some connection problems—as many Twitter clients do—and this one suffers the same problems. From time to time I had to sit and stare at revolving circles while my tweets were trying to load, but most of the time things worked beautifully. All in all, Tweeki 2 is a great addition to the Pokki family, a platform which many use as a Start-menu replacement for Windows 8, and will appeal to anyone on the hunt for a simple, beautiful and free Twitter client.

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Review: Tweeki is a beautiful, mobile-like desktop client for Twitter

Twitter is one of the most popular social networks around, and accordingly, Twitter clients are a dime a dozen. Despite how common these clients are, it's surprisingly hard to find one that works well, is simple and easy to use, and is also nice to look at. Tweeki is trying to be just that: A simple and beautiful Twitter client, with all the basic features needed to manage a Twitter account.

Tweeki is an intriguing combination between Web app and desktop app. It runs on Pokki, a desktop interface and store for web apps.  If you don't already have it, it will automatically install when you download Tweeki. Compared to popular clients such as TweetDeck and MetroTwit, Tweeki is no more than a mini-app, and feels almost like something you would install on your mobile device. The interface is nice and clean, and includes everything you could want from a simple Twitter client.

Tweeki's interface makes it very easy to read your Twitter timeline.

After logging in with a Twitter account, you'll find five tabs you can use to browse your stream: timeline, mentions, direct messages, lists and search. The interface is simply gorgeous. Your timeline is easy to read:  Your own tweets appear against a green background and your mentions are marked in orange. This makes it doubly easy to see what's what in your timeline. Tweeki's color scheme cannot be changed, however, and the available one is not colorblind-friendly.

Each tweet includes the usual options to reply, retweet (both old style and new), send a direct messageand add to favorites. Conversation view is also available, helping you keep track of back and forth tweets.

You can easily browse the people you follow, your followers and your favorites.

You can use Tweeki's interface to find all the lists you're a member of, and to create and subscribe to new lists. You can also perform Twitter searches from within the app—those can be saved for recurring use—and even explore world trends through hashtags.

Through the settings, you can enable or disable your Tweeki notifications; these come as either "badges" or "banners", and can be activated for timeline, mentions and/or DMs. Badges will simply show the number of new tweets in a tiny badge over Tweeki's tray icon, while banners are actual pop ups, and are much more noticeable. You can play with these options to create your personal notification preferences. Take note that if you enable banners and then choose to shut down Tweeki, you will be bombarded with them when you launch it again.

The difference between the "badges" and "banners" notifications.

When it comes to tweeting, things are almost perfect. Writing a tweet is easy enough, as is attaching an image, which is a nice feature.

Trouble starts when trying to attach a link. The program's settings include the option to shorten links automatically, but unfortunately, this doesn't always work. Not only does the automation fail, but they sometimes remain long even after shortening manually by clicking and choosing "Shorten link." Even when a link does take its short form, the character count for the tweet doesn't always update, which is quite confusing. Another sorely missed feature is a spell checker.

Set your favorite notification preferences through the settings.

Tweeki includes the option to manage more than one Twitter account. You can add more users by clicking the small arrow next to your profile image at the bottom of the window. Once you add several accounts, you can easily switch between them through the same arrow. Switching accounts takes several seconds, and notifications are not labeled in any way to indicate which account they belong to. This turns multiple-account management in Tweeki into quite a confusing experience.

In the first ten minutes I used Tweeki, it lost connection to Twitter for quite a long time,  and it wasn't entirely reliable when it came to showing every single tweet. This problem solved itself within approximately 30 minutes. Since it's part of Pokki, there's no visible way to close Tweeki. You can sign out from your Twitter account, but you might have to enter your username and password all over again next time you want to log in.

Tweeki is a simple client with a stunning interface, and as long as you don't need to manage more than one account, it's an excellent free option. Tiny and sweet, it turns keeping up with Twitter into a joyous task, despite the occasional reliability issue, which is present in almost every client. If you need to manage several accounts, and want to spend some money, you might have better luck with MetroTwit. In all other scenarios, give Tweeki a spin.

Note: The "Try it for free" button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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