Seesmic Look is the first Twitter client I’ve used and I have to say it simplifies a whole lot over Twitter.com. Seesmic Look’s best feature isn’t just something that would come with any client though, it looks very polished and presents information in a visually appealing way. Designed to match the graphics of Windows 7, Seesmic Look still works on Windows XP, Server 2008, and Vista as well as Windows 7.
[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com].
Beyond the good looks, Seesmic look also presents Twitter information in a more useful, more presentable way than the Twitter website. Things like Channels, Interests, and “playback mode” all channel information into a usable, eye-catching way. First, however, we’ll need to install Seesmic Look. Its installer runs under a megabyte (669 KB) and requires .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. From what I’ve seen, the Seesmic.Look.exe process runs right around 100MB while in use.
After installing Seesmic (which is a very fast process), you’ll get a little tutorial to explain Seesmic’s interface and features. It was fairly straight-forward but I found the interface to be intuitive enough that I skimmed through the tutorial and was able to find my way around just fine.
When you first launch Seesmic, you’ll be greeted with bubbles fading in explaining current trends. It’s a pretty interesting visual display of the information, but you can also have it displayed in a list by chronological order or alphabetical order. You can also choose to see current trends, trends of the day, or of the week.
You can update your status or perform a search at any point using the text boxes at the top of the screen. You can also easily do a public reply or direct message to a person or retweet something by using the buttons on the right side of the screen.
You can use Seesmic to filter all of the information on Twitter down to things that interest you. Clicking ‘Interests’ on the left side will bring up another list of categories that you can use to filter down to your interests. You’ll then be viewing tweets that are relevant to your interests to help immerse you in the “real-time web”.
Channels are similar to Interests, but they are branded channels deriving their content from Twitter accounts associated with particular companies. There are a number of different channels like Time Magazine, Huffington Post, New York Times, and more.
Seesmic helps you delve into the Twitter-verse and find out lots of information going on in our crazy world, but Seesmic Look does it in a visually appealing way. If you’d like to download Seesmic Look, you can find it on the Seesmic Look Download Page.
If you’re looking for the Seesmic organization of Twitter, but don’t need the visual components of Seesmic Look you should still investigate other products by the same developers:
- Seesmic for Windows
- Seesmic Desktop (for Mac or Linux with Adobe AIR)
- Seesmic Mobile for BlackBerry or Android phones
80 %CPU usage. When I sign into my twitter account, I get a null reference exception. #FAIL