One of the nicer things about Twitter is that there are a multitude of third party clients out there to let you interface with the service. One of the worst things about Twitter is that most of these clients are not-completely-baked, so I usually feel like Goldilocks (this one’s too hot, this one’s too cold…).

Snipe’s already done a great rundown of the more popular clients, so no need to re-invent that wheel. What I have been thinking a lot about is my perfect client. What it would do, would not do, and what it would look like.

So, my ideal Twitter client would…

  • Integrate with Facebook, seeing as most of my family’s there and not on Twitter
  • Integrate *well* with Facebook (Like Seesmic)
  • Allow me to use my keyboard to scroll though unread notes (Like Spaz)
  • Have support for threaded display (I’m told Tweetie does this, but I’m on a PC)
  • Have a decent GUI, or allow me to customize as I see fit (Spaz wins this)
  • If the GUI’s ugly or I don’t like the default colors, allow me to change them. (Looking at YOU Twirl)
  • Allow me to change the default font sizes (My eyes are not getting any better the older I get.)
  • Provide a quick and easy way to mark as read.
  • Provide a quick and easy way to visually differentiate read from unread messages. (TweetDeck’s little white dots do not count)
  • If a user is listed in multiple groups, marking a specific entry ready in one group should mark that entry as read in any other group the user is listed in.
  • Allow for easy creation of program wide friends groups. (So I can mix FB and Twitter listes) Drag and drop would be nice.
  • Documentation. As in, make sure there is some.
  • No, a user-driven message board doesn’t count.
  • No, I don’t care that your client is in Beta. If I can’t find an option in your GUI, I need to know if it’s been hidden by bad design, or if it just doesn’t exist. If I wanted to play hide and seek I’d be an alpha tester.
  • In-line support for url shorteners, and the ability to add my own preferred shortening service if it’s not already listed. (Or if I want to roll my own someday.)
  • Short link and image previewing (TweetDeck does this pretty well)

For the record, I’m using TweetDeck.? It does enough things right that I can mostly ignore the things that it gets wrong. For now.