High Order Blog

It was just earlier today that I posted a Twitbit 2.3 preview, where I covered new features like lists, geo-tagging, retweets and more. I also promised to go into the full list of new features once the update was released. Well, you’ve waited long enough. Twitbit 2.3 was released earlier today — both in the paid and lite varieties.

Before I get into features, allow me to introduce Twitbit’s new tabs:

I know. I went on and on in a previous blog post about how having only 5 tabs was such a great achievement. And it was a good achievement — but not one that came without compromises. The accounts tab always kind of sucked. And combining your timeline and mentions onto a single tab had its downsides. The functionality added in this release combined with those considerations finally necessitated that we break the 5 tab barrier. So how do you manage and change accounts? Screenshots:

We think the new structure is as powerful and intuitive as ever. In addition to being better-structured, Twitbit 2.3 is packed with all kinds of small interface refinements and performance improvements. They really do add up.

On to some new features. First, trend explanations. Not only have trends been moved to their own tab so they are easier to access, but they now are accompanied by full explanations courtesy of Let’s Be Trends. Scroll through a list of trends with truncated explanations or tap into to see the full explanation and check out what people are saying.

Next up: person search. Twitter has made a ton of great progress recently exposing more functions to developers (and it looks like that trend will continue). The latest example of this in Twitbit is full person search — just like you get from Twitter. Instead of only being able to lookup a user directly by their username, you can now search by first and last name and get a list of matching results!

And that’s not all! The user view now notes whether someone is following you and let’s you add users to your address book. Here are some more screenshots of that view and some others:

All of these improvements are in both the paid and lite versions of Twitbit (except for those that are push-spectific), so check it out for free here. Or you can find more detailed release notes on our website. As always, we’d love some feedback. Enjoy the update!

Finally, Twitbit 2.3 was submitted to Apple over the weekend, and wow, are we excited to tell you about it. We initially hoped to release a quick 2.2 follow-up with Twitter list support, but decided we couldn’t stop there. So, after a longer than usual wait from us, the result is a great update. We want to save a few surprises for launch-day, but here’s something to whet your appetite:

First, new Twitter features: lists, geo-tagged tweets and retweets are all supported. Your lists and list subscriptions are always a tap away, along with subscription and following numbers. Native Twitter retweets are a one-tap operation and old-style retweets are still there when you need them. Retweets are clearly marked in your timeline and the retweeter is clearly identified.

Retweets and lists are cool, but the really exciting feature for me personally is geo-tagging. We put a lot of thought into the implementation, until we had a feature that’s not only easy to use — but fun to use, too. I won’t get into the details now, but here are a few screenshots to give you the idea:

Aside from supporting new Twitter features, we added some nice features of our own. There are three in particular that I want to highlight: photo previews, timeline search and improved persistence. A picture is worth many words:

We’ve always attempted to strike a balance between leaving you where you left off when you open the app, and immediately taking you to the latest, fresh info. Well, there were a couple key scenarios absent from the former category. Namely, if you’re viewing a tweet, direct message or website when you close the app, we’ll make sure to put your right back there when you re-open it. If you’re in the middle of composing a tweet or direct message, you’ll be reminded the next time you start the app.

Related to where you should land when you start the app is a new feature that takes advantage of built-in push notifications. It seems like a long time coming, but when you view a notification, you’ll be taken directly to that message. Immediately send your reply, retweet, view a link, whatever.

We have some other exciting features to announce, but I’ll save those for the launch. In the meantime we’ll be posting more screenshots from @twitbitapp. Stay tuned!