Periodic Ramblings

Seesmic launched their latest Twitter client today called Seesmic Look.  It aims to make Twitter updates more friendly and accessible.

The interface is definitely a change from traditional Twitter clients and there are three different views that you can choose for displaying your tweets.  The above picture shows the “Playback” mode where Tweets are displayed on your screen in “bubbles” as they are Tweeted by the users you are following.

The “alphabetical” display shows your Tweets sorted alphabetically by who tweeted it.

And finally, there is a “timeline” view which displays the Tweets in a timeline as they are tweeted.

On the left side of the interface you can choose what you are viewing in the three display options.

• Trends – Displays latest trends in Twitter.
• Inbox – Displays your follower’s Tweets and Mentions.
• Social – Listing the Tweets from the users and groups that you follow.
• Favorites – Listing the Tweets that you have marked as favorites.
• Interests – Listing of Tweets by categories.
• Channels – Tweets grouped into channels.

I ran into a couple of bugs, nothing unexpected for a new release.  I had trouble with my feeds always updating.  It seemed to randomly “freeze” and I would either have to refresh or choose a different view on the left and then go back to my regular view.

The interface while polished and easy on the eyes, is not conducive necessarily for a laptop user as myself.  It takes up a large swath of screen real estate and shrinking it makes the Tweets less easy to follow on the screen.  It is aimed at a user who is willing to give up the screen, has multiple screens or has a large monitor on a desktop where the screen space is not an issue. 

It definitely is aiming for the casual Twitter user, as it removes some of the ambiguity around who to follow and what type of information is posted on Twitter.  While the typical Twitter user has a following and is following a group of people, people new to Twitter may feel overwhelmed with what Twitter is.  A tool like Seesmic is definitely going to help make Twitter more useful for a larger group of people.  It reminds me in a way of the Pointcast program that would push updates to the desktop and display them in a streaming bar.

While I may not use this on a regular basis, I do see myself using it every once a while, just because of the interface.  Nice work Seesmic.