Author: Vibin

In case you missed it, last week we compared Google+ and Facebook comprehensively and voted Google+ as a better social network. This week we’re looking into the best Twitter client for Windows, comparing Tweetdeck and Echofon, which has just released for Windows, but is very familiar for iPhone users.

Note: Echofon isn’t a Social media dashboard, TweetDeck is, but here, we’re not comparing TweetDeck’s features like Facebook, LinkedIn integration, we’re comparing it with Echofon as a Twitter client, hope you get it.

Design

Winner: Echofon

I often find TweetDeck to be complex, a Twitter client needs to be simple, for example, Microsoft Excel on the first looks messed up because it’s used for productivity and there’s a lot to do in it, but TweetDeck is totally different, it’s a Twitter client. I don’t really like the black on yellow layout, though you can change the color from the settings, I don’t find it appealing  than Echofon. The single column view (on top right) solves this problem to some extent, but not completely.

Echofon’s interface is simple and neat. There’s one column view by default and it makes good use of Windows 7’s Aero.

Composing Tweets

Winner: TweetDeck

Whether you want to schedule your tweets, translate them, or even shrink them(not with Deck.ly, which is now no more), TweetDeck is your best bet. If you’re a Foursquare user, you can check into Foursquare directly from TweetDeck. It also shortens URLs supporting almost all the popular URL shorteners, so you can track the number of clicks they get. You can also choose the service to which you want to upload images.

Echofon offers just the basic features like adding location, images (you’re forced to use Lockerz for images) and uses Twitter’s t.co for URL shortening.

Functionality

Winner: TweetDeck

Apart from the fact that TweetDeck is built on Adobe Air (which is the reason why it’s a resource hog), one main reason why people prefer TweetDeck to others is, it’s feature rich, for example, TweetDeck notifications keeps you track of new tweets, @mentions so you don’t need to keep checking it every minute. It supports the keyboard shortcuts like J, K to read Tweets one by one, which work on the Twitter website. TweetDeck now being a part of Twitter makes me think will integrate features like ‘Activity’ tab into TweetDeck.

Echofon is not at all feature rich, the only advantage you get on Echofon, which you don’t get on TweetDeck is image previews, images automatically load in the tweets. Another good feature is syncing, it perfectly syncs with Echofon on your iPhone, so you can start reading tweets right from the place you left.

Customization

Winner: TweetDeck

Sadly, both of these Twitter clients doesn’t support plugins like Seesmic (which is built on Silverlight).

In TweetDeck, you can add, remove columns, and filter tweets by keyword, which is pretty effective. You can also see what’s popular in your timeline and hide seen updates. Apart from all these, the settings window gives you tons of options for customization.

You can’t just customize anything on Echofon.

Final Note

TweetDeck’s features clearly beat Echofon, but it still lacks simplicity. Finally, TweetDeck is the winner for this week’s showdown.

TweetDeck is for complete Twitter addicts while Echofon is perfect for minimalists, it is worth a try, though. Also, don’t forget that Echofon is still in beta, so the final version may bring some new features.

What do you prefer? TweetDeck or Echofon?