It can be confusing enough to understand exactly how Twitter and Facebook work without also having to use their sometimes painfully slow web interface.
Thankfully there are a number of third party software programs available that let you manage your Twitter and Facebook accounts (view, post) from the desktop without ever having to log into the web.
Seesmic Desktop is one such standalone program and the developers have just added Facebook integration to what is already a great desktop Twitter client. I love Seesmic because it runs on Adobe Air which means the same program can be used on either Windows or Mac. The interface is nice and clean and free of a lot of icons that perform features I might never use.
The real power of Twitter is in search. And the Seesmic Desktop allows you to create as many searches as you like and save all of them off to the side. You can optionally open separate windows for each search and view the results as they update in real time. This type of monitoring is helpful for when you might want to monitor Twitter feeds for your company name, product or other important topics.
Sadly missing from Seesmic is any type of Twitscoop integration. This handy site shows the top trending topics in Twitter and is remarkably accurate at picking up on breaking news. While you can “Like” friends Facebook posts – you’ll have to wait for a future release to comment on them.
Seesmic Desktop is still a preview which means that it’s undergoing further testing before full release. To download a copy, follow the link below.
