Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Seesmic Desktop Preview - 9 Amazing Thoughts for Seesmic Founder Loïc Le Meur



    "Seesmic Desktop" is the make and model of the latest and greatest Twitter client for Mac and Windows.

    And that was a triply-parallel sentence.

    And that was a fragment.

    Seesmic founder Loïc Le Meur (who created the soon-to-be-downsized Twhirl, another Twitter client) pre-released Seesmic Desktop today at 6pm PST to the ultra-elite "Team Seesmic" - of which yours truly is a member, thank you, thank you.

    So I gave Seesmic Desktop a test drive.

    (Join Team Seesmic here - no higher brain functions necessary - and become one of the elite few-dozen thousand. Like me.)

    As a loyal and steely-eyed member of Team Seesmic, it is my sworn duty to give Loïc Le Meur some honest feedback about Seesmic Desktop. So here it is - my feedback - blow by blow:

    1. Figure out a catchier name. Something more...je ne sais quoi...more Twitter-esque. Come on Loïc Le Meur, "Seesmic Desktop"? That doesn't sound like a Twitter client to me. Sounds like some Frenchman trying to be incognito. How about "Tweesmic", bub. Try that. Then we'll talk.

    2. Right off the bat, Seesmic Desktop looks and acts much like TweetDeck. You've got your maximizable window with the multiple columns - one for the general tweetstream, one for replies, one for direct messages, and one for groups (sneakily dubbed "userlists" to differentiate from TweetDeck). Very nice, love it, old standby feature, must-have, you're beautiful, don't ever change.

    3. You tweet from up top as in TweetDeck, only instead of a tweet zone that appears and disappears at the click of a button, the tweet zone stays there, right out in the open, encouraging copious amounts of over-tweeting. Again, I-love-you-don't-ever-change.

    4. You can tweet from multiple Twitter accounts using Seesmic Desktop. Awesome. You can't tweet from them simultaneously though. You should be able to do that. Get on it, Loïc Le Meur.

    5. Some of the same bugs I see in TweetDeck and DestroyTwitter (another Twitter client you must try - wins the Will Conley Award for "Most Beautiful and Most Fluid Twitter Client") appear in Seesmic Desktop. For example, I open SD, I see tweets in my Replies column, I close the client, I open it again, and some of the tweets I saw earlier are now missing. WTF, mate? Also: What The Fuck, mate? Probably just Twitter's fault, not that of the client itself.

    By the way, quick commercial break for those who don't know what a client is: In Computer Land a "client" is "an application or system that accesses a remote service on another computer system, known as a server, by way of a network." Some people say "app" or "application" interchangably with "client" but those people are wrong and sad and need therapy and are socially awkward and will fork over their lunch money or else.

    6. Yo Loïc Le Meur, when I go to make a "userlist" or group, when I close the program and then reopen it, the userlist is gone. Userlists are useless unless they are savable. Fix that and you'rebeautifuldon'teverchange.

    What else.

    7. Apparently you can save searches from session to session in Seesmic Desktop. That's like, if you want to track all Twitter mentions of your company name, you will always be abreast of the nasty things people say about your company by using the saved search function on Seesmic Desktop. I don't trust it though, not yet. Fix it and/or give me some assurance of its "saved" savedness, Loïc Le Meur. Love ya. Je t'aime.

    Sorry, I don't mean to keep saying your name and making excessive condescending use of French. I actually parles un peu de francais myself. I'm just "having a go" at you and your culture, as the lousy Brits say. You understand. I gotta play the part of a bigoted Fox News-watching American, being American and all. I loves me some freedom fries.

    What else some more.

    8. Seesmic Desktop is prettier than TweetDeck. Not as pretty as DestroyTwitter.

    9. Make it so I don't have to refer to a Web browser to find out what someone is replying to when they @ reply me. Let me do it within the client like DestroyTwitter does.

    That's all I got. Talk to me. What do you all think? I know you're dying to talk, so get it on. Right here on Many of Many Words. And tell Loïc Le Meur to say hi to me. I'm lonely for some Internet fame.