Update: Brizzly is now available to everyone. TechCrunch reports it has also rolled out a new instant-translation feature.
Over the past few days, I’ve been using Brizzly, a Web-based service to manage Twitter accounts.
In a market with no lack of competition, Brizzly seems to be counting on a more friendly and intuitive look and feel to attract Twitter users from rivals such as Twitter.com, HootSuite and SplitTweet.
Brizzly, currently in beta, features a three column interface. The sidebar on the left-hand sides offers ways to access your friends, mentions, direct messages, lists and search. The right-hand side features a cool direct messaging tool that acts and feels like instant-messaging – it’s probably Brizzly’s “killer app” – along with trending keywords and news.
The middle of Brizzly is devoted your Twitter stream with basic functionality – replies, retweets and favourites that you find in most, if not all, Twitter services.
A useful feature within your Twitter stream is the ability to quickly get information about the people who you follow with one-click. There are options to follow, unfollow, mute or send the person a direct message.
…as well as people mentioned in tweets. You also get the ability to follow, unfollow, mute or send the person a direct message.
Verdict: Brizzly is interesting but it probably doesn’t have enough bells and whistles right now to replace Tweetdeck. While I like some of the features, particularly the direct message tool, Brizzly needs a little more sizzle and some smoothing of its UI.
2 Comments
Brizzly is a cool product that I've been using more since Twitter implemented lists. I wanted the ability to continue loading old tweets and Brizzly was the first to offer that option within your twitter lists.
However, I can't get past it's somewhat clunky interface. It doesn't someone that wants to quickly scan a large number of tweets. I've now starting using the Seesmic web interface and it's clean design and link previews are just what I needed.
You make an excellent point about the interface, particularly how the number of tweets compares with Seesmic or Tweetdeck. I think many people get spoiled by the amount of information they see on Seesmic and Tweetdeck, which makes it difficult to go back to Twitter or services with a similar look and feel.
Thanks for the comment.