Top Console Twitter Clients

Many people are simply bewildered by microblogging and are unable to comprehend why anyone participates in this form of communication. Yet microblogging continues to attract enormous fascination from people of all walks of life. Microblogging has some inherent dangers that can impact everyday life. The risk of a criminal record for off-hand or stray comments is a sobering possibility, and microblogs that have undermined superinjunctions are a real issue. Nevertheless, microblogging is a very addictive, and fun way of interacting with others in a conversation style in an exceptional terse way.

The most popular microblogging service is Twitter. Launched just six years ago, Twitter has more than 140 million participants using their service, sending more than 25 billion tweets each year. We have previously highlighted our favorite graphical Twitter clients in two separate articles (Article 1, Article 2). Given that Twitter is predominately a text only media, there is a certain logic in using a console based app to engage in this form of microblogging. Using Twitter with a console app lends a number of advantages such as speed, flexibility, and reliability.

The purpose of this article is to identify useful console based Twitter clients. Console based applications are light on system resources (very useful on low spec machines), can be faster and more efficient than their graphical counterparts, and are ideal for scripting purposes.

Twitter has recently announced restrictions to API use that may discourage independent developers from developing new Twitter agents and clients. We have already seen that Tumblr users have been restricted from searching for friends via Twitter. The difficulties presented by the restrictions to the API has led some prominent microbloggers to call for users to migrate to an alternative microblogging service. Some of the applications featured in this article support other Twitter-like APIs, such as StatusNet and Identi.ca.

Now, let's explore the 5 console Twitter clients at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, a screenshot of the software in action, together with links to relevant resources and reviews.

Return to our complete collection of Group Tests, identifying the finest Linux software.

Last Updated Friday, August 24 2012 @ 05:16 AM EDT