First View of Twitter for Blackberry

By now, you may have heard that Twitter released its official Blackberry App on Friday. As an active Twitter user on the Blackberry, I use SMS to tweet because other Blackberry apps failed to deliver consistently.

Once a huge fan of UberTwitter, the tool simply slowed down to a crawl. If left running for too long, my phone locks up.

My hope for the official Blackberry Twitter app was that it would intelligently manage my limited resources more effectively. Instead of eating memory, it should remain light but functional. When I am ready to tweet, the application needs to be ready, too.

Having installed the Twitter app last Friday, my first impression was a pleasant one. The interface is an attractive blend of form and function.

Unlike UberTwitter, the Blackberry app fuses Twitter updates into its native messaging application. This means I will see Twitter notifications where the rest of my e-mail and phone messages reside.

The application, for those who have not used it yet, provides the standard features: Users can update, reply, retweet, view lists, search tweets, find friends, send direct messages, watch trends, and share images.

Following only 131 people, the application opens quickly. However, with default settings, my phone eventually locked up and required a reboot. To remedy this problem, I adjusted the refresh option from automatic to manual.

Overall, I am pleased with Twitter's official Blackberry application. It is an attractive tool that runs more like a native app than its third-party competition. However, if you were looking for a new feature to play with, I saw nothing. It works as expected and provides Blackberry users with another tool to update Twitter.

The great effect this recent change may have is on the competition. With UberTwitter, Seesmic, and OpenBeak already established, Twitter for Blackberry may end up taking a larger piece of the pie. In fact, popular developers, like Seesmic and SocialToo, are already reacting to Twitter's Blackberry app and the purchase of Tweetie.

I would love to hear your views on the subject. What do you think about the new Blackberry application? What should these developers be doing right now? Let's talk about it in the comment section below.

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