Apps Compete and Innovate for Twitter

One of the most interesting social media battles gearing up online is not between Twitter and Facebook, but between all of the applications competing to help you manage your networking lives. This is because Twitter has spawned an ecosystem of highly innovative application developers.

The list is already long and growing, with Seesmic Desktop, Echofon and Twitterberry all jockeying for position on home screens. The recent revamps to Tweetdeck, the new release of Tweetie 2’s iPhone app and the impending addition of Hootsuite to the iPhone lineup mean there are a number of quality choices in an ever more competitive landscape.

The biggest benefit for users is innovation in powering integration. While Twitter is just now getting around to opening up the retweet function, which as recently as Wednesday night mysteriously vanished from Twitter.com, the ability to share and comment on someone else’s message is just a single click away through a variety web, desktop or iPhone applications. Syncing up your social networking outposts was happening through client applications before it was officially endorsed by Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, et al.

Last week, during a press conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone hinted his company may be looking to strengthen its value proposition to end users by possibly acquiring certain third party developers.

“As our attention is grabbed by some of these developers, we will take a hard look at them,” Stone said

I believe these apps would be best left to their own brainstorming and should remain independent of Twitter itself. Twitter is better off taking care of its core product (and focusing on, say, eliminating the Fail Whale), while the rest of the apps take care of adding the embellishments and breakthroughs.

In the meantime, this will benefit the customers, who will then be able to find the best way to interact with Twitter. The bottom line for users typically comes down to their main access point for Twitter. While Twitter.com can be an effective home base, if you have more than one account, as professionals more and more often do, you will quickly seek out something in your browser, like Hootsuite or on your desktop, like Tweetdeck. And when it comes to mobile access, Twitter has allowed the other developers to lead the way on smartphones.

So, as Twitter looks to grow in 2010, look for it (and its users) to also benefit as for the war between the client management apps to continue to heat up.