Like a lot of BlackBerry users, I have TwitterBerry for keeping up with Twitter (
) and Facebook’s native BlackBerry application for checking my friends’ statuses, uploading photos, and making wall posts on the social network.
While both of these applications are fairly good at keeping up with these two sites from your mobile, what I’ve longed for is an application that combines both in one interface – much like TweetDeck (
) and Seesmic Desktop () do on the desktop. Enter SocialScope, a new BlackBerry application (in private beta) that looks to deliver this, and does a fairly impressive job.
Twitter and Facebook On The Same Screen
After setting up both your Facebook () and Twitter accounts, you’ll be able to see the latest status updates from your friends on both services, on the same screen, when you login to the application. From here, you can also update your status on both services simultaneously, like you can do in the aforementioned Twitter desktop clients. Also cool – when a Tweet includes a TwitPic (
), you see a thumbnail of the image. Moreover, SocialScope supports Groups, so you can track updates from only specific people – even more useful when on the small screen and not your desktop.
Link Sharing
After installing SocialScope, you’ll notice that when you’re browsing the Web, you now get an option to “Send to SocialScope” any page that you’re viewing. When clicked, it automatically shrinks the URL (using bit.ly) and prompts the update form so you can share the link on Twitter and Facebook. This is a huge time saver versus the current process of sharing a link on Twitter via BlackBerry, which, I frankly rarely have done to-date because it’s so cumbersome.
Built In Retweeting
When browsing Twitter, either on the home screen or on the separate tab for Twitter (you can separate out Facebook and Twitter if you wish), there is a built-in retweet option. Highlight the tweet that you want to retweet, select retweet, and you find yourself on the “Update” screen with the original tweet, the option to add your own text, and the ability to push it to both Facebook and Twitter.
Other Goodies
Some other cool features of SocialScope include URL expansion, so you can see where a short URL points, notifications on the BlackBerry home screen so you know when there are fresh updates (which, is basically all the time if you follow a significant number of people), hash tag search, and the ability to create a new tab for any user to quickly see their profile.
Conclusion: It’s As Close to the Desktop As You’ll Get On BlackBerry
Look, BlackBerry is still no iPhone when it comes to applications. The interface is not nearly as elegant, and there are still often serious performance issues when running apps. But SocialScope is about as close as you’ll get to a full-featured Twitter client on BlackBerry. The Facebook features still need to evolve a bit – and that’s likely to happen soon through the recently released Open Stream API.
Unfortunately, the app is still in private beta (though you can request an invite from their homepage), so it will be a while until you can try it for yourself, but it’s one to watch if you’re one of the increasing number of social networking users that’s also addicted to BlackBerry.
