How does it compare to TweetDeck?

“Scoble, you’re using some weird language here.”

Yeah, if you aren’t a Twitter addict you can skip this post.

So, why compare just TweetDeck to Twhirl? Especially when there are dozens of tools to use with Twitter?

Because I listen to the people who I am following and these are the two I see getting discussed all the time. If you want me to review another tool well, get more people to talk about it!

So, anyway, now that we’ve covered my gatekeeping function, why choose one tool over another?

TweetDeck appeals to those who have to watch Twitter all day long. Journalists. Customer support people who’ve been tasked with making sure that everyone on Twitter is happy. And addicts like me.

TweetDeck is a dominant mode app. It takes over your entire screen. I have it running on an old MacBookPro that is toward the end of its life (had the crud beat out of it) and that’s all that machine does: run TweetDeck. It has several columns. The first on my screen shows all my friends that I’m following. The second shows me replies from people who put “@scobleizer” into their Tweets. The third has direct messages that are sent specifically to me. The fourth has a search for “Scoble.” Fifth has a search for “Scobleizer.” Hey, I’m an egotistical baaahhhhssssttttaaarrrrdddd, so sue me. But then the next few columns are things that are interesting to me “Cloud Computing.” “Google.” “TechCrunch.” “Ted.”

You can see how that would be useful for, say, someone who worked at a big company and needed to track everything said about her company, her competitors, and the space her company works in.

I’ve got to admit, I use TweetDeck more often because I like the layout of columns and the fact that it takes over my whole screen.

So, now we come to Twhirl. First, you should know that Twhirl was purchased by Seesmic, which is a video conversation tool. So that’s one thing you’ll notice right away about Twhirl: it’s the best way to do Seesmic videos.

Twhirl also has more features than Tweetdeck. It sends messages to ping.fm, for instance, which will redistribute your Tweets onto other services like friendfeed and facebook.

Lots of people will like the fact that Twhirl looks more like an IM client window and does NOT take over your whole desktop.

So, which one do you like the best?