Let’s face facts, people. Most, if not all of us are striking back at our evil corporate overlords by engaging in what the kids these days are calling Social Media. The Facebooks and the Twitters are doing everything they possibly can to erode employee productivity and send the bottom line straight into the toilet, and your Uncle Scott is here to help push that process along as much as possible by introducing you to the best damn Facetwit application the iPhone has going for it: Seesmic.
I’ve been a long-time Twitter and Facebook citizen, and though there are plenty of good Twitter clients and a solid Facebook app on the iPhone, I’m all about the convergence. I challenge anyone to come into my kitchen and find a device with only one use — no rice-cookers or potato-mashers for this guy.
Multipurpose is all the rage these days, and my iOS app choices usually reflect that as well. I’m often “that guy” who posts the same nugget of brain candy as both a Tweet and a Facebook Status update, so having a place to do both at once is super handy.
Seesmic allows you to register multiple Twitter accounts and Facebook accounts, and lets you easily switch between them, posting content to all or any of them in one fell swoop. A 4-panes “desktop” view shows you all of your accounts at a glance, and you can also scroll between accounts simply by swiping right and left. Location Services, TwitPic/TwitVid support, URL shortening — it’s all there under the hood.
All of the other Twitter functionality you’d expect is right there, and the Facebook side is no slouch either. Quickly scroll through your news feed, post comments on things, and Like-button the crap out of them. The only thing missing is the ability to dive into people’s FB profiles, but for that the actual Facebook app is only a tap away.
Seesmic is in no way a “new” application. It’s been around for quite some time, which might beg the question as to why it deserves a review. Over the last few weeks I’ve seen a growing number of people on Twitter asking for recommendations for good iPhone clients, as some of the other major players either aren’t providing certain functionality or are having some pretty severe stability problems. Since Facebook, by population, is something like the world’s 4th biggest country or whatever, it stands to reason that there are a LOT of you who are in the same boat. Seesmic’s desktop and web-based clients are well-known, but their iPhone app seems to have flown under the radar a bit, so I’m just trying to preach the gospel a bitsy.
Oh, and the best feature? Seesmic sells for the low, low price of precisely no money. I hereby COMMAND you to go get it.
(Author’s side note: this entire review was crafted on a train somewhere between Göteborg and Stockholm, Sweden, using nothing but an iPad. But yeah, the iPad is only for consumption, not creation. Right.)
