While up until this point Twitter has been hands-off with the iPad they have decided to build a first-party app: Twitter for iPad. And it looks like it has all the trappings to become the Twitter iPad killer app. From the hands-on article at PCMag,
The free Twitter for iPad app expands the functionality of previous iPhone Twitter clients by introducing “Panes,” or fly-out panels that offer a spacious reading experience without blocking your feed.When you tap a tweet, a separate panel slides in from the right side of the screen, which displays a user’s most recent update, bio, Web site link, number of followers, the number of people that person follows, and other typical Twitter information.
The app also lists a handful of similar Twitter users who might be worth following. Although Panes take up a sizable portion of on-screen real estate, it’s still quite easy to follow the main Twitter feed.
An excellent part of the “Panes” paradigm here also is that they will be media rich, embedding audio, video, and enabling easy conversation navigation.
Aside from the interesting “Panes” concept, Twitter for iPad also follows the gestures paradigm. This allows users to produce finger/mouse gestures across the iPad surface to create actions within the Twitter for iPad interface. Two fingers and down scrolls to other messages in the same conversation and two fingers together spreading apart opens a user bio.
While this may make third-party developers feel a little bit left out (by making Tweetdeck and others look like chumps), if they haven’t been attempting to take advantage of these systems in the iPad, these app developers have definitely fallen behind. Needless to say, hopefully it will spur the third-party app producers to write their own killers.
For now, it looks like Twitter for iPad will carry the day. See Twitter’s own blog post on their product for more information.
