Microblogging clients for Linux

Linux has a number of Twitter Clients (for example, Qwit and Twitux), but they are limited to Twitter.  What about one client that works with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and other social networks? Which ones will actually work on older machines with limited memory? Can we track them all at once, with regular updates that do not require refreshing the page? We live in a world driven by instant information.  We live in a world of social networks via the Internet. Are there Linux solutions to the world of instant microblogging?If you only use Facebook and Twitter, and having the two on separate pages is not an issue, you might want to use Facebook’s Twitter application. However, it only tracks the Twitter private postings. You do not get public postings, or personal messages. Similarly, if you only use Yahoo, which includes Flickr, and Facebook, Yahoo has a link to Facebook, but not Twitter.  Neither meet the criteria for live updates.  While the Facebook Twitter app updates when you switch to the page, it doesn’t update while you are on the page. The same goes for Yahoo’s Facebook app, it is slow and does not update. Plus, both only allow you to see one or the other stream.

You can reduce the overhead of the browser by using the Firefox Prism extension to create a Web application that uses Mozilla’s XULrunner technology.  Prism is just a stripped down browser that takes you to a single site. The Ubuntu repository already contains Prism apps for Facebook, Twitter, and the Goggle apps. The Prism Web apps have the same problems as using the actual Web page, but without the full overhead of the full browser.

For just Twitter and Facebook, the Brizzly extension in Google Chrome offers another browser based soluion. You can multiple Twitter accounts, and one Facebook account.  Each account has a separate tab, but it lacks live updates. You just need to get used to Brizzly’s logos, which make it look like its target audience is a small child.

There are two Linux desktop applications that support viewing and posting to multiple social networks. Gwibber and Tweetdeck. Each have advantages and disadvantage.

Gwibber is an Open Source Gnome application written in Python. You cannot download Gwibber, as it is only available from the supported distros repositories. So far I have installed version 2.0 on XUbuntu 9.10 and version 1.02 on Fedora 11. Ignore the openSUSE HOW-TO page on Gwibber, as it doesn’t work. After a lot of work, I was able to dowload it and all the odd-ball python libraries through the software download service. All the download work was for naught, as both version 1.2 and 2.0 failed with Python errors on a KDE desktop. Gwibber allows you to connect to BrightKite, Flickr, Laconi.ca, Twitter, OCS, Qaiku, Facebook, FriendFeed, Digg, and Identi.ca.  The XUbuntu tests were done on a Micro Transport ZX laptop with only 256 MiB of memory. It does great for viewing messages in a single, or multiple streams. I still haven’t figured out how to send messages.

I really like TweetDeck. I can view and update multiple Twitter accounts, a Facebook account, a LinkedIn account, and a MySpace account. The one problem is that Adobe Air is a real memory resource hog, and TweetDeck is not a light-weight application. I can get TweetDeck to work on a 512 MiB machine, but only if I start it first, and am careful about how many other applications I am running. This social network desktop definitely is not for older machines.

Although it does not provide a mechanism for reading data from any social network, Ping.fm is a great app for posting to 50 different social networks. It is Web based, but definitely a solution to the multiple posting issue. The one weakness is that you must be careful of your message size to fit the smallest microblog size, which is Twitter’s 140 character Tweet.

While it only supports Twitter and Facebook, I prefer Brizzly for older machines, as I can view and post from one application.  Gwibber with Ping.fm offer another alternative. If your machines has the resources to run it, TweetDeck is the best micoblogging software appl;ication available for Linux.