At this point I’ve tried almost every twitter client under the sun, so impressing me doesn’t come easily. This week I took a look at one of the newest twitter clients on the block – blu. Developed by thirteen23, a company that prides itself on delivering experiences, rather than just products. blu certainly delivers on that motto, offering an incredibly slick UI.
Built to run on Windows Vista or Windows 7 (it uses .Net Framework 3.5), blu has all the standard features – view friends stream, replies, direct messages, view profiles and update your status. According to their site, the aim of blu is to reduce clutter and create a simplified experience, they certainly achieve that.
Unfortunately simplification in this case means means the lack of a couple of key features. My current desktop client is TweetDeck, this offers the ability to track multiple topics, something blu fails to include. It doesn’t need the multiple panes, even just a pane connected to http://search.twitter.com to track at least one topic would be a great addition.
The second feature that’s missing is Trends. A critical reason for the success of my favourite mobile twitter client – Tweetie, is the ability to see what’s currently stimulating the twitter community.
Probably my only other complaint is the inability to resize the client. It ridiculous that while I’m running 1920×1200 blu is only 600 pixels high, that’s half of my available space. This needs to change.
Blu’s really looks at home with the default Windows 7 beta wallpaper.
I really like blu as a twitter client, and with a few changes i could see it really making a challenge to be my primary twitter client. If you can deal with the lack of resizing options, I’d definitely recommend this over twhirl (my fav, single column twitter client).
More @ Thirteen23.com
