According to research I stumbled upon a while back (and which I’m now too lazy to actually look up, so you’ll just have to take my word for it), the Twitter web interface is still the number one place for people to update their Twitter account. Which to me was quite surprising, considering that the Twitter web interface doesn’t even automatically reload your Twitter stream, doesn’t have built in anything and lacks just about everything other clients have. In a nutshell.
To remedy that situation, Brizzly has stepped in. Basically, it’s a web client for Twitter, the difference is that it includes most of the features the clients we grew to love have had for a while (like TweetDeck). Which features, you might ask? Well, since last week, Brizzly automatically updates your Twitter stream, meaning you won’t have to click refresh in order to see new tweets from your followers. But that’s just the beginning, folks!
Brizzly also automatically displays pictures, videos and full URLs included in tweets, removing the ever so dangerous necessity to click into unknown territory via shortened URLs. And for those who are already absolutely overwhelmed by the number of messages their myriads of followers are shooting into the twittersphere, Brizzly has a grouping feature, which, I must say, really is handy as hell.
Good old Brizzer, as I already lovingly call it, also includes a rather nifty sidebar tool for direct messages and also displays the newest Twitter trending topics in said sidebar.
To top it all off, Brizzly also supports several users, so if you’ve got a, say, private and corporate account, you can add them both and smoothly switch between the two. Just make sure you don’t confuse them, because, well, you wouldn’t want to tell your company’s followers every detail about your last bowel movement, would you? Come to think of it, I guess your private followers wouldn’t mind being spared that info as well. So please, do keep that to yourself, will you?
Anyway, Brizzly might not be the first alternative web-based Twitter client (there’s Ginx, which has been around for a while but is more bare bones than Brizzly), but it definitely is the most feature-rich. I do have to concede though that the overall design isn’t really that easy on the eye, but I’d rather put function before form, in that case.
Oh, and in case you’ve not clicked over to Brizzly yet, I might have to mention that it’s still in private beta. So if you want to get in right now, leave a comment detailing why you think I’m probably the most talented tech-writer in the long history of tech-writerdom, and I’ll send an invite your way. Good luck!