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.

Seesmic Desktop Preview

If you’ve caught the Twitter bug then you already know all about Twitter. It’s a short messaging service where users send up to 140 character messages telling their friends – and the world – what it is they’re doing.

The reason that Twitter has caught on so quickly is that it’s simple to use, free, and many celebrities and public figures have started to recognize the public relations value of sending out quick promo messages.

To use Twitter you can sign into their web site here. This works pretty well generally but you are limited in a lot of ways by the web interface. For example you cannot easily paste links, photos or search for keywords that people are Twittering about.

In order to do some of the more advanced things such as search and paste photos you need to use a standalone Twitter client. The two most popular ones are Tweetdeck and Twhirl.

Both of these programs automate the sending of receiving of Twitter messages (called tweets). They add features such as automatically shortening links you post within messages, supporting multiple Twitter accounts, saved searches, and real time updates.

Just last night Seesmic (who is the publisher of Twhirl) released a Seesmic Desktop client which expands upon their Twhirl program in several ways.

Seesmic Desktop (shown above) – Visit Seesmic for more information and download link

What’s interesting about Seesmic Desktop is the interface is much cleaner and easier to read than their similar Twhirl product. You also can create multiple windows that expand off the right side of the screen (very similar to how Tweetdeck works). You can just as easily remove those extra screens if you prefer working in a narrow view as the screen above shows.

What’s missing?

There’s presently no support for trending twitter topics and I’ve had trouble copying URLs into the message bar and having the program auto-shorten them for me. Integration to Facebook is a feature that is missing but promised for a future release. Seesmic’s Twhirl product includes integration to Friendfeed while this client does not — and it seems such integration may never be included

Seesmic Desktop runs on Adobe Air which means you can be either a MAC or PC and runs this program with the exact same feature set.

Link: Seesmic Desktop

Seesmic updates their Twitter client to include Facebook integration

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