I won’t bother to ask how many of you are on Twitter. The answer to that is usually a raised eyebrow and a “duhhhh” on your part. I will ask what client you are using, though. There are a lot of options out there, and I think I’ve tried them all. I’ve hated many of them, and enjoyed a few. However, I have to say that the best Twitter client I have ever used is the Twitter App – especially on the iPad. This app is simply stunning. That’s all there is to it.

“Twitter for iPad brings your Tweets together with web pages, photos, videos and more. Tap on any tweet, and a related content pane will open, displaying any linked content from the tweet, including web pages, profile information, hashtag searches and similar users. Slide panels from side to side and quickly navigate through related content.”

Look at the clarity in the photo above. Even with the lower quality due to resizing and being a photo (instead of the app itself), you can tell how great it looks. It packs a hell of a lot of features inside without feeling as though it’s trying to do too much – like what we’ve seen in other apps.

There are three important ways that Twitter for the iPad works as well as it does:

• Panes – Tapping on any tweet will open a new pane on the right. Depending on what’s in that tweet message, you’ll see a video or photo, a news story or another tweet. You can still tap on tweets, open new panes and read more content for as long as you wish. It’s simple to move between panes by swiping right or left.
• Media – Whenever you tap on a video link (or open a web page that has a video embedded on it), you can play it inline. Sometimes, video can take forever to load. The panes let you look through your timeline while the video loads. This keeps you from getting impatient with load times and just giving up. Swipe back to the video whenever it’s ready to play. Also, you can simply pinch a video to play it full-screen!
• Gestures – Pinch a tweet to view details about the person who wrote it and to reply or retweet it. Put two fingers together and pull down on the tweet to check out replies to it. This shows you the entire conversation leading up to that tweet.

Did you catch that last sentence? Here, let me make it easier for you by showing it to you again: This shows you the ENTIRE CONVERSATION leading up to that tweet. It’s about time there was an easy way to do this! How many times have you read something on Twitter and thought “WTF is that about?!” Sometimes, we can’t make sense of half the shit people say on Twitter without clicking through twenty times to get to the original message.

No, this isn’t the only client or app that can do this. However, it IS the best one, in my mind. I challenge you to show me something better.

What client do YOU use? Why do you prefer it over others that are available?