Twitter has just recently released its full-featured mobile beta for review and feedback.  Of course, the heavy hitters of Twitter have already leaped onboard and tried their hand at it, providing great commentary.  My turn!

The Main Page

The site to take your mobile browser to is http://mobile.twitter.com.  I’m an iPhone 2G user, regular ol’ locked mode with AT&T account.  That’s what I’ll use to give it a shot.

When you get there you’ll see a nice, pretty blue home screen, along with a Search box to find topics talked about on Twitter.

The Popular Topics are broken down by what’s popular now, over the course of today, and over the course of the last 7 days.

Under the Search box is the Trending Topics section, but called Popular Topics here.  Clicking on any one of the topics will give you an automated search on it.

Above it all, top right, is a Sign In button. Go ahead, give it a shot…

Note: There is no “Save my login information” option, so you always have to login so far…”

Post-Login

After you go through the basic login screen, you’ll have a few familiar choices to play with…. I’ll go through them quickly.

At top is the status update screen. Just click in the window, type something and hit Update.  There is the traditional 140-count rundown for you.  You can also see how long it’s been since your last update, for people like me who tweet way too damn much…

The tweets look pretty decent, showing the basics: a sender link and avatar, tweet, time since the tweet, and whether or not it is a reply.  Below that you have icons allowing you to reply, retweet or favorite it. Pretty simple.

Next to the Home button you can see your @Mentions, Favorites and Direct Messages.

Note: There isn’t a URL shortening method in Twitter Mobile, so long tweets will stay that way.

Using the Interface

I went through the basics, did a tweet using the copy n’ paste feature of the iPhone to see how it handled long addresses (see note above,) and shuttled through the different menus without issue.

I chose one of my favorites from one of my favorite tweeters, Gary Arbaugh, who always has great advice, stories and recipes for me.  Then I tried the reply feature on the favorites.

The interface works smoothly, same as Twitter. It’s barebones, so there are no customized background setting changes or photo change options. No biggie.

Other features in Twitter Mobile

I scrolled down to see that the screen fits 20 tweets, one after the other, along with a More button.  This amount is fairly typical of mobile Twitter apps.

At the bottom the screen you will additionally see your avatar, how many followings and followers you have, and your last update.

At the very bottom, you can also choose to go to Standard Twitter if your browser can handle it, and turn images off in order to speed up delivery (basically moving to the bare-bones old-style mobile Twitter feed.)

Popular topics are repeated here for your edification.

Clicking on any avatar will give you that person’s following/follower stats and tweets, as well as the ability to follow or unfollow. No blocking feature.

Final words?

Well, the interface works pretty smoothly, looks great on an iPhone, and am unsure as to how it will fare on much smaller cell phone screens.  Give it a shot and let me know in the comments section!

While looking for my Direct Messages, I did get to see how the Fail Whale looks like on Twitter Mobile.  Kind of heartening to see such a familiar blue guy!

On an iPhone, Twitter Mobile Beta is no Tweetie 2 or Tweetdeck Mobile, or even Twitterific.  But it’ll do on cell phones that aren’t as capable, and I welcome the foray into the playing field so dominated by companies other than Twitter.

I look forward to future offerings, and hope that Twitter continues to work toward reclaiming some dominion over their interface.