Twitter Finally Releases Own Windows 8 App

Almost six months after announcing it was working on a Windows 8 app, Twitter has finally released it through the Windows Store.

The new client features the classic Home, Connect, Discover, and Me tabs, as well as brand new features developed specifically for Microsoft’s latest OS and taking advantage of its touch capabilities.

Better late than never

Obviously, the official Windows 8 client enables Live Tiles that can be fine-tuned to display various Twitter notifications. The app also puts greater emphasis on photography by adding a larger “landscape view” for photos. Users are able to tap pictures to go to a full-screen view, or swipe left and right to cycle through other photos in a particular user’s tweet stream.

The new client is able to “snap” alongside any other Windows 8 application, taking up one-third or two-thirds of the screen.

Twitter has also developed two “charms” – a Share charm that can be added to the right menu in Windows 8 for instant sharing of content on Twitter, and a Search charm that allows users to search Twitter for the most relevant mix of people, hashtags and Tweets.

“We’re excited to bring this Twitter app to Windows 8 users, and hope you’ll enjoy it too,” wrote design lead Mike Kruzeniski on the Twitter blog.

Twitter originally had many third party clients, but is now privileging its own apps. In December 2012, popular Twitter client Tweetro was forced to start charging its users, after hitting the 100,000 user limit set out in the updated API rules, announced in August. Twitter didn’t provide an extension to Tweetro that would allow it to add more users and keep its services free, since it did not think the app addressed an area that its “current or future products do not already serve”.

This is particularly interesting because Tweetro was one of the first Twitter clients designed specifically for Windows 8 users. It featured complete touch compatibility, and was designed in the visual style of Microsoft’s latest OS. The app has many convenient additions that were absent from the original Twitter client, such as pinch-to-zoom, dynamic layouts and the ability to open the links right inside the app.

However, since last year, Twitter’s policy actively discourages the development of third-party apps that replicate its core functionality, so Windows 8 users had to wait months for a good quality Twitter client.

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