One of the things my company is implementing soon is PCI Compliance Level 1, since we do a large number of credit card transactions.  With this comes some hurdles, one of them being very restrictive policies on installed software.  Since I am such a big fan of TweetDeck, this made me a little sad.  So I began the hunt ahead of time for some web-based Twitter clients that are top notch and give me that TweetDeck feel still.  Trust me, this wasn’t easy and I have at least an issue with every one of them.

TwitHive

TwitHive doesn’t seem like a bad client.  It’s very minimal, quick and efficient.  Not fancy graphics, Adobe Flex layouts or any fancy UI.  What you see is what you get.  So depending on the person this could be a good thing or a bad thing.  For me, I like a little bit flashier UI.

When you want to setup your “columns”, TwitHive calls these “channels”.  When you define a new channel you have several options either to show your feed, conversations, retweets.  Heck, you can even show questions you have answered or URLs you’ve posted.  That’s a nice feature I must say.  You can even define groups within the interface and group people together.

One thing is I cannot tell how often the automatic refresh happens, and there is no setting to adjust it anywhere.

Pro: Snappy interface, better for slower internet speeds, gets the job done.
Con: Interface is bare, no refresh option.

CoTweet

If you are familiar with Apple and their Mobile Me web applications, you will like CoTweet.  It has a very similiar feel to the Mobile Me web interface.  At first glance it’s a really clean interface and the color scheme meshes pretty well for me.

It has some common features like search, trends and multiple account support.  But it also has some nice advanced features I haven’t seen with other clients.

For example, when you post an update to send to Twitter you can actually schedule that to be sent at a predetermined time.  This is nice if you use Twitter with your brand to send announcements to your group of followers.

Also, you can select a tweet, add notes and assign it to a specific user for follow up later.

Pro: Clean, Mobile Me inspired interface, advanced features like tweet scheduling and follow-up.
Con: As mentioned above some may not like the Mobile Me look, no group support.

Hahlo

Hahlo is another client that has all of the features and a decent interface.  They do provide a really easy way for you to get to any of your actions like tieline, mentions, sents, follows and so forth through a quick menu interface.

Also their settings are is very mac like with switches for all of the settings.  You can also change your refresh interval which it seemed other clients were missing.  By the default the auto refresh was off so it took me a second to realize this.

Pro: Clean, scales well with wide monitors, nice settings area.
Con: A lot of the features are hidden in the menu.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed is not exactly a Twitter client, but it does have the ability to post to Twitter so I wanted to include it in my roundup.  If you don’t know, FriendFeed is a service that allows you to aggregate your life stream into one service, where your friends can see everything you are doing around the web in one spot.  Also, as a note FriendFeed was recently acquired by Facebook which you will most likely see these features coming to an status box near you soon.

The coolest thing about FriendFeed though is anytime you do anything within one of your configured services, it can automatically post a Tweet with a link to that action.  So if you post a new picture on Flickr it will tweet a link to that photo.  Cool huh?  And in addition if you post a status update within FriendFeed that status update can optionally be “CCd” to Twitter.  So in a sense it is a Twitter client, except you will only see updates from only your FriendFeed friends.

Pro: One interface where your life stream lives, real time, acquired by Facebook.
Con: Can only see tweets from your FriendFeed friends.

Seesmic

One of the front runners when it comes to multi-account Twitter clients is Seesmic.  They’ve had a installable application for a while now and recently released their web-based client which is still in beta.

First, you get all of your basic Twitter functions on the left, such as timeline, mentions, direct messages and so forth.

You can also drag the columns around and order them to your liking.  One thing that made no sense to me was when I wanted to add my direct messages column you can’t; all you get is this thin list on the left side.  Very inconsistent if you ask me.

You do get two themes, black and white.  Besides this there is not much to the client.

Pro: Clean, limited theme support, draggable columns.
Con: Not much else besides this, awkward direct messages listing interface.

HootSuite

In my opinion, I have saved the best for last.  HootSuite has some of the best features I have seen so far in a web based Twitter client.  In addition to all the basic features all of the other clients have, you can do some really neat things.

By default you get two columns with your timeline and mentions.  In addition you can add new columns for direct messages, sent tweets, pending tweets and favorite tweets.  You can also add other types of columns like by keyword, search or even groups.

On top of the columns, you can add additional tabs that contain columns.  This is nice if you want a different tab for each brand you might be following and tracking.

The status update area on top is very slim and out of the way.  You can even “roll up” the area and compact it to give you the most optimal space.  There is even a URL shortener built in.

There is multiple account along with multiple user support, so that multiple people could manage a company or brands Twitter account.

Also, another nice feature is if you are idle in the interface after so long it will stop updating until you come back and wake it up.  This is great because it saves on bandwidth dramatically which is crucial to keep services like Twitter running smoothly.

Pro: Advanced column support, multiple tabs, URL shortener built in, multiple accounts and users.
Con: More theme options, allow status update box to extend width for large monitors.

There you have it.  I hope that helps anyone else who wants to use a web-based Twitter client.  And if you have any other recommendations let me know!

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