Twitter Nov. 3 updated its Twitter for Android application with a speedier-scrolling
timeline and a new tweet details page, among other perks.
Twitter for Android has been fairly decent for users since the micrblog launched it in late April.
Users of the app could tweet and share links and photos and access their timeline
with the home screen widget.
Twitter for Android also let users see a tweet location on a map thanks to
Twitter's geotagging tool and see tweets in any application that uses Android's
QuickContact bar.
Still, some tools were lacking in Twitter for Android that users of other
Twitter apps enjoyed. For example, in the new app, users may access the new
tweet details page just by clicking on a tweet.
This feature, which makes it a snap to reply to tweets, retweet or favorite,
is already available in Twitter for iPhone, Twitter for iPad and Twitter for
Windows Phone, which Twitter launched last week.
Other improvements include:
- Pull to refresh, another
feature copied from the Twitter for iPhone app, lets users pull down the
screen to load new tweets.
- Swipe to Reveal lets users
swipe across a tweet to see profiles, share a tweet or reply to a tweet.
- Quote a Tweet, which lets
users click the retweet icon to quote a tweet.
- High-res avatar photos are
also now part of the mix.
This new version of Twitter for Android is available from Android Market on
devices with Android 2.1 and higher. Users may also scan the barcode here to grab the app.
Twitter stirred civil unrest among its platform developers in April after it
launched Twitter for BlackBerry and Twitter for iPhone.
App programmers believed Twitter was trying to cut them out of the action by
launching official versions of Twitter apps that competed with their own
clients.
Twitter strove to reassure that this is part of the natural evolution of its
business and urged programmers to work on other vertical apps for the
platform.