Do we really need another Twitter client for the iPhone? Apparently, the developer behind Trickle think so and he came up with quite the interesting novelty.
Unlike other Twitter clients, this one doesn't do a whole lot. In fact, it only shows one tweet at a time -- the latest message from the whole mass of Twitter accounts you're following. Just a single 140-character message in bold white Helvetica type is displayed, imposed on a black background, with new ones pushing in from the right.
Trickle offers no facility for writing new tweets yourself. Two buttons, however, sit at the lower end of the screen, allowing you to retweet or favorite any specific message that pushes in. The app, by the way, checks for new messages every three minutes, queueing new ones that come in, then displaying them one after another with a brief time delay.
While that pales against the feature-rich nature of most Twitter clients in the App Store, it could be a useful one for those who only use Twitter for catching up with news or updates. Using the app, you can simply dock the phone and occasionally glance to see what's going on. In fact, developer Caleb Thorson calls it a "passive Twitter client" -- a fitting bill if I ever heard one.
Personally, I think an app like Trickle would be great if it was just a ticker that runs on the bottom of the screen. A whole screen for single-message updates, however, sounds like a waste. Your mileage may vary, though, so if you think you'll find this useful, you can download it now for 99 cents.
[Trickle]
