Twitter clients: Hootsuite vs. Seesmic

I'll admit it... I'm a Twitter addict. I love the interaction and knowledge that is shared throughout the community, and I've met some really great people through it. However, Twitter can quickly suck up all my time, energy and patience - especially when I try to tie my tweets in with my Facebook and blog posts.

To try to make some sense of the whole social mess, I turned to Hootsuite, which seems to be the defacto post-once, post everywhere social media tool. Through it, I could post to my Facebook profile, Facebook business page, and my Twitter all at once. This was especially convenient when I posted from my phone - I love being able to take pictures at events I go to (like last Friday's Bulls for Boobs Susan G Komen 3-Day Walk fundraiser, thrown by the team I walk with in Arizona, Team W.I.S.H). However, I became frustrated because Hootsuite wasn't posting items the way I wanted it to, so I began my search for a "better" Twitter client. 

Lo and behold, I think I may have found it! Seesmic recently updated their web client with a whole bevy of new features (not the least of which is the ability to update your Facebook page, something that only Hootsuite did well and easily). Here's a few of my personal pros and cons for each of the platforms:

• Clearly the more polished web interface of the two. You can make it look really pretty and shiny.
• Has full analytics built in. This is useful if you're interested in that sorta stuff, which I should be but am really trying to avoid it in a defiant 3-year-old temper tantrum kind of way.
• The mobile clients are pretty slick and easy to use. They even look a lot like their web client, which is a boon for those of us with short attention spans.

• I can only get 4 columns to show up at any time on the web interface. Normally, this should be enough information overload for anyone, but I'm a firm believer in the myth of multitasking.
• No desktop version. Now, granted, i don't use a desktop client, but if I did, this would be a negative.
• The Android client only posts links to pictures that you upload to Facebook - there's no preview. So instead of a bunch of really cool pictures of a bull wearing a pink bra, I got a bunch of links on my Facebook status. Not the intent, there.

• Multiple columns on the screen - right now, I have six showing. This is wonderful for me, because I can monitor all of my different real estate and business client lists from one place - and still see the main conversations in my feed as well.
• Cool contact manager - find out anything you wanted to know about those you're following, including if they're following you back. Not that there aren't tons of services out there that do this too, but I like that it's all in one place.
• When you upload a picture to Facebook, it shows a preview of the picture. I explained this one up in the Hootsuite cons above. Pictures make me look at the rest of the post - they're attention getters, and I like it if my posts get attention.
• Totally rocking Direct Message system. It's on a separate page, and acts more like chat than a Twitter feed. It definitely prevents you from losing DMs in a wave of other tweets.

• No analytics. This is a big bummer, because even though I personally don't use them, I absolutely understand the need and want to see if your social media efforts are paying off. There are a lot of people who are getting tons of business, real estate or otherwise, off their Twitter and Facebook usage. I'm sure they're tracking their ROI.
• The Android client is slow, and sometimes bogs down if there's been a lot of time between updates. I don't turn on background notifications because I have an HTC Evo and the battery life is second to ..oh... EVERYTHING, so having to wait 10 minutes while the tweets of the day load kills me. I did find a workaround for this that involves clearing the cache, so I can live with it.

So there you have it - why I decided to switch from the Twitter client all the cool kids used to one that might not do everything, but what it does, it does really really well. I can tweet, post to pages, and generally annoy my Facebook friends all from one program, and be virtually guaranteed that things will look they way I want them to, barring the occasional Android autocorrect fail. Throw in the option of using their kick-ass desktop client on top of everything, and we've got a winner!

Note: Tweetdeck, another popular program, also has a rather robust web client, if you're using the Chrome browser. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the damn thing to work for me (it seemed as clunky as my dad's old 70's-era Chevy Nova,) and their Android client doesn't post to pages (or if it does, the ability is hidden REALLY well.) Anyway, that's why I didn't include it in this analysis.