Twinkle is not a dedicated Twitter client, but its claim to fame was that it shows local tweets only.  It’s an intriguing idea, especially if you’re interested in meeting local people for Tweet-ups (social gatherings with Twitter friends), but it wanted you to first sign up for Tapulous, their free service.  The messages that I received were actually Tapulous messages instead of Twitter tweets though.  I didn’t want to sign up for another service, so I deleted the app.

Twittelator starts with a list of groups, such as friends, replies, and favorites.  Unfortunately, these links disappear when browsing the postings.  I also had a hard time viewing user profiles and doing other common Twitter functions.  Most damning was the inclusion of paid advertising between every fifty messages.  You can get around this, and get many more features (some really cool), by purchasing the “Pro” version of Twittelator, but I wanted to try the free stuff first.

Twitterific is another Twitter client with a free version and a paid version.  Like Twittelator, the free version limits you to a “dark” theme with white text on a black background.  Harder to read, but you can get “light” themes with the pay version.  The basic functionality was better with Twitterific though, and includes context-sensitive help windows.  Like Twinkle, Twitterific allows you to view local tweets (without the separate service).  At least there are no ads.

Lastly, I tried TwitterFon.  This app works the most like Twhirl, my desktop Twitter client of choice.  With a little work, I was able to follow links in the tweets and look up user profiles.  You can even follow people right from the interface.  Thankfully, there is no “paid” version of TwitterFon, so what you see is what you get (even the black text on white background theme that others make you pay for).  I used TwitterFon extensively while on vacation in Orlando.

So which one did I like best?  I’ll probably stick with TwitterFon for a while.  Of the free Twitter clients, this one is the best.  It has some drawbacks, like only downloading the last 200 tweets at startup, but I’ve learned to live with those.  After a while, I might try a pay version or maybe even Tweetie (paid app with no free version), but you just can’t beat FREE.