I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t a big Twitter fan when the service first debuted. I distinctly remember sitting outside of one of the ball rooms at SXSW in ’07, staring at one of the monitors that was showing a mash-up of everyone’s tweets at the conference and thinking, “I just don’t get it.” It took me a while to finally warm up to the idea of Twitter and looking back, I think I only “got it” after I actively started using Facebook to interface with my friends. However, even then I still didn’t see a ton of benefit to using Twitter, but seeing how everyone else was using it, I figured I better dig a little deeper to truly evaluate the service and it’s benefits.

Then came Twinkle and everything changed. According to our buddies over at Tapulous, the application lets you

Discover, connect, and send messages to people nearby. Upload photos and update your Twitter account. Contact old friends and make new ones, all with Twinkle, the location-aware network for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

I first heard of Twinkle when we were building the tapulous site last year and being the iPhone junkie that I am, I couldn’t wait to test out. Once they launched in the App Store I downloaded it immediately to check it out and since that day I’ve been hooked!

What I like about the app

At it’s core, Twinkle lets me keep up to date with everyone I’m following on Twitter, right on my iPhone. Updates that I make appear on the applications Home screen along with updates from people that I’m following on either Twitter or Twinkle. But what really sets Twinkle apart is that I can see what other Twinkle user’s are posting near my current location. Using the “Nearby” feature I can set a distance from 1 mile all the way up to to Everywhere. Once the distance is selected, Twinkle pulls in a set number of Twitter and Twinkle posts from people in that range. Why would anyone want to do that? Well, if the weather is bad and you’re running late for work, you can set the distance to 5 miles and you can bet that you’ll see a post complaining about the traffic on the roadways that you take on your way to work. Those posts could tell you that you need to take an alternate route to work or you may realize that traffic is at a stand still so you might as well hop back in bed!

What I think needs work

For the most part Twinkle is a great app, but as with most applications there are things that can be improved. Despite using the application for some time, I’m still confused about by the application’s “Friends” screen. My Friends in Twinkle are people that have started following me on Twinkle and those same people may or may not be following me on Twitter. Plus none of the people I’m following on Twitter are pulled into this screen, so I have no way to quickly message them unless I see them in my Home feed. To top it off, the application doesn’t tell you that new people are following you, so you have to remember to check the screen periodically.

However, my biggest beef with the application has to do with the handling of Private messages. When replying to one of your posts, people can choose to reply publicly or they can send you a private message instead. These private messages appear in the Private Messages screen along with Twinkle system announcements. All that sounds well and good, but I’m stuck with these old messages and notifications because there is no way to delete these messages! How lame is that?

Sticking with it!

All in all though, the benefits offered by Twinkle far outweigh the shortcomings of the application. Twinkle still gives me a great way to update Twitter and see what’s happening with Twinkle users in my area, all on my iPhone. Hopefully some of the issues I mentioned will be resolved in the next update, but in the meantime I’m going to still use Twinkle to keep in touch my friends and local community. I’d love to hear what you think about the application so download Twinkle from the App Store and try it out. You can contact me on Twinkle as “adamlittle” and as always, you can find me on Twitter at adam_little. Happy Twinkling!