140Char

One of the most popular Twitter clients, Tweetdeck, has added new features in the latest release,  version 0.31. It’s pushing forward as one of only two Twitter clients with a share of over 10%, as measured by Twitstats.

Included in the latest release is a new notification system which can be applied to certain groups. Plus it also has inline reply, retweets and direct messages inside the notification menu.

A major feature you might not notice is that Tweetdeck has now been optimised to consume less memory, which is good for everyone – plus there’s also the time-saving option of keyboard shortcuts, and a Heads-Up Display.

And depending on how popular you are, you might find the feature to view your newest 100 followers comes in useful as you can directly follow, block or add to a group.

Check oout the video below for the official walk-through:

Interesting contrast between the attitudes of China and the U.S to Twitter at the moment.

In China, access has been stopped to Twitter (and new Microsoft search engine Bing). The likely reason is the anniversay of Tiananmen Square protest. However, like a lot of people analysing usage figures for Twitter, the Chinese authorities seem to have forgotten about Twitter clients, such as Seesmic Desktop, for the moment.

Compare that to the U.S – with the military unveiling a social media strategy for news from Afghanistan which includes Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. There’s an official Twitter account at www.twitter.com/usfora which currently has 2985 followers. There’s some more detail in a Wired article.

One thing I’ve when people compare Tweetdeck versus Seesmic Desktop, or when there are discussions around the top Twitter clients is the assumption that people only ever pick one client at a time.

At the same time, I’ve started to wonder if the arms race between Tweetdeck and Seesmic Desktop means that people assume users only ever want more features – rather than perhaps using a comprehensive client for work and a lightweight client for commenting whilst watching television for example.

So before I write my own assumptions I wanted to throw out the question:

I didn’t realise that Twitstat has a list of the clients which post most frequently to Twitter (that are tracked by @twitstat), until I saw the recent list published by Mashable.

The web interface tops the list at 29.57%, then it’s

• Tweetdeck 10.58% (Uber client for Twittering and monitoring)
• Twitterfeed 5.54% (Automated website and blog feeds)
• Twhirl 4.92% (Effective Twitter client)
• Twitteriffic 3.79% (Twitter client for mobile).

And the next four places are all mobile clients, with Twitpic in tenth.

Warren at Twittermaven took things a little further by aggregating the mobile, desktop and utility categories, and pointing out more people use mobile to post than desktop clients. One of his posters has also pointed out that the data could be misleading as people might post through the full web page on mobile internet.

But I’d expect the trend to be fairly close to reality. A mobile-optimised experience is likely to be an easier ’sell’ than moving from the web interface to a client. And although early adopters and corporate Tweeters can find huge value from tools like Tweetdeck,  that’s not the average Twitter user.

The top 10 applications account for 70% of usage, which conforms to The Long Tail. Friends of 140char on the list include MrTweet at #40 and disapointly Cesare’s great Posty client is down the list at #211.

It seems that Canada has joined the rest of the world in losing the ability to receive Twitter updates via SMS, as revealed on the Twitter Status Blog. As with the rest of the world, the blame is placed squarely at Mobile carriers:

‘We can’t afford to support this service given our current arrangement with our providers (where costs have been doubling for the past several months.)’

The post continues:

‘The ability to update Twitter over SMS will still be supported over 21212. But we know that this is only part of the experience and we want to make Twitter work in the way folks want … regardless of where they live.

There is a realistic, scalable SMS solution for Canada (and the rest of the world.) We’re working on that and will post more details on the Twitter blog as we make progress.’

It seems a little strange this appeared on the Status Blog, and not the Official Company Blog, which is what happened when we lost Twitter updates via SMS in the UK. And at the time, there was the promise of several new local SMS services across Europe – but I don’t think anything has been arranged yet, and to be fair, if you’re not being monetised or bought by Facebook, then the costs do start to add up:

‘Even with a limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US.’

SMS is obviously a hugely profitable enterprise for mobile providers currently. And I doubt much will change on that front for some time – but hypothetically, with the rise of smart phones and access to social networks (and fortunately, Twitter and clients), could this a cause for even the start of a decline in SMS usage? Any mobile phone experts got any idea of the figures, and whether smart phone usage means less SMS?