For far too long the Twitter experience on the BlackBerry has been lacking. I’m being nice. Compared to iPhone, Palm Pre, and Android users, who seem to soar the micro-blogging skies on wings of splendor while performing aerial stunts that make the kids scream in delight, using Twitter on a BlackBerry is akin to being locked in a dark closet alone, with no dinner, and only a 1930’s ticker tape machine to tap out cries for help with. Yes, there have been a few recent attempts to change that with apps like UberTwitter and TweetCaster, but always at some kind of sacrifice in speed or battery life.

Well, Research In Motion has finally had enough. In one month’s time they will launch Twitter for BlackBerry, an official Twitter app that not only delivers a visually compelling and feature-rich experience, but one that is integrated with BlackBerry Messenger so you can send Tweets and receive Direct Messages without the need to have Twitter itself running.

I’m testing an early version of the app on a BlackBerry Tour 9630 and so far it’s fast, full-featured, and glitch free. They could easily release it for use right now, but will instead spend the next four weeks testing its performance over the network and both polishing and adding new features. I guess if you’re going to arrive late to a party, it’s best to do so fashionably and with an aim to impress.

Appearance

Twitter for BlackBerry has a very friendly interface. The cheery band of clouds above, the soft blue backgrounds, and a handy set of feature icons at the top make it easy to switch between different modes.

The Tweets are easy to read and you can use your trackball to select different aspects – the avatar photo, user name, attached link, etc. without having to open the Tweet in full first.

Attached photos are displayed with a thumbnail preview, a really nice touch, and from there you can choose to view the picture within Twitter or follow the link to the photo-sharing website in your BlackBerry Browser. When you view a photo within Twitter I find it can sometimes place it behind the Tweet itself by accident, one glitch they’ll need to work on.

Trending Topics are displayed in two views, one showing the topics of that very second, the other the topics for the day in a word cloud to emphasize the ones that have remained dominant in bold type.

The search is quite robust. Not only can you perform searches using keywords, phrases, and hashtags across the network, saving the ones with helpful results for reference later, but you can also search across GPS data for results within a local radius of 1 – 100 miles.

One change I’d prefer to have is the way names are displayed. It credits each tweet to the person’s Twitter address rather than their user name. I really don’t want to have to keep track in my head that @donttrythis is Adam Savage or that @GreatDismal is William Gibson.

Another annoyance is that if you scroll down through your Twitter feed, down through twenty or forty messages, you have to scroll all the way back up to the top again in order to reach the menu of icons at the top to select another feature. Of course you can press your menu to bring up a selection screen in the BlackBerry’s OS to reach those same choices, but it’s nice to use the icons if you have them.

Options

You can select an Auto Refresh for your incoming tweets every 5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes, or even by the hour. I’ve had it set for 5 minutes for over a day now and haven’t seen much of a drain on my battery. You can also tweak this by choosing how much of your timeline you’d like to it to refresh – the last 20 to 100 tweets.

If you choose to use the autorefresh option, you can also select to have the system send a notification e-mail to your account when it detects that there are new Tweets available.

For those of you who need it, there’s also a spellchecker which can be turned on or off.

A camera icon in the message bar makes it easy to add a picture to your tweet, either directly from your camera or from storage and you can add web links directly from the BlackBerry Browser, and GPS location data directly from BlackBerry Maps. Location data can be displayed in your choice of miles of kilometers.

Twitter for BlackBerry supports Twitter’s Retweets and allows you to mark tweets as a favourite.

BlackBerry Integration

Here’s the tricks the other handsets can’t do.

You can compose both tweets and Direct Messages from within the BlackBerry Messages and E-mail app. The menu for both now list the compose options as Email, PIN, SMS, Instant Message, and Twitter. This means you don’t have to have Twitter open to send a message, and it makes it easier to copy content (using the Copy and Paste commands) from other message systems into your Twitter compositions. Direct Messages are now integrated into BlackBerry Messenger and will appear instantly and with a notification, the same as Email and text messages. Unfortunately you can’t reply to these. You can compose and send a new Direct Message, but to reply to one you’ll have to go into the Twitter application itself.

Facebook Integration

If you have the Facebook for BlackBerry app installed you can now send content from your Twitter timeline as your status update. This includes any tweet, not just the ones you’ve written. You select a tweet from your timeline, open the menu, select “Send To”, and then choose Facebook from the options listed. This allows you to update your Facebook status at the same time as you’re updating Twitter without having to permanently link the two accounts to each other.

Improvements Needed

At this time there’s no option to select which integrated services you’d like to use. By default Twitter for BlackBerry uses bit.ly to shorten urls and Twitpic for photos. No service at this time for videos. Obviously there are a range of different services to handle both types of content and many users will prefer to use their own favourite.

Another option needed is the ability to either manage more than one Twitter account or to arrange those you follow into groups. At this time you can log into and use just one account.

Launching In March

Officially Twitter for BlackBerry is in Beta and won’t be available until March, but as it exists it’s already a polished, full-featured, and functioning app. It’s hard to see them adding too many new features and it won’t surprise me if they end up releasing it early. It certainly it will be a warm welcome when they do. It’s nice to finally have a free Twitter app that delivers on flash and performance without the need for an annoying ad system.

 

You can follow me on Twitter here.