Twhirl 0.9 is Serious Social Software

With the release of Twhirl 0.9, your social media experience could be taken to a whole different level. Some of the new features available in this release help you engage with your community in multiple dimensions while allowing you to also track responses and topics of interest.

Saved Searches

One of the features I really like in the new Twhirl is the ability to search for something and then Activate it as a saved search. This makes it simple to stay on top of your favorite topics, hot trends, or just people misspelling your name.

Ping.fm Support

This is really important for those of us who manage multiple profiles across different social sites and services. Ping.fm supports sending updates to over 30 social sites. Now, you can tap into that power directly from Twhirl. Once you have your Ping.fm account set up in Twhirl, all your updates are broadcast across the net. It even takes care to do this intelligently, ignoring @replies, for instance.

Seesmic Integration

How can you be a social media mogul without doing video? That’s right! You can’t. Twhirl now has two-way integration with Seesmic. You can view your timeline and actually record and post your responses. Make sure you setup up Seesmic to update Twitter so that they can join the conversation as well.

Twhirl vs. TweetDeck?

If you have not actually tried Twhirl, you should. You never know if you’re using the best tool for the job unless you have actually tried other tools. Some differences to note between the two:

• Twhirl not only supports Twitter, but also Identi.ca, Laconi.ca, FriendFeed, and Seesmic
• Tweetdeck has groups, which I don’t use, but seems like an important feature to many people
• Twhirl supports multiple accounts
• Twhirl’s Ping.fm integration helps you stay in touch across the web
• Tweetdeck allows filtering of each column
• Tweetdeck also has integration with Twitscoop to track trending topics

Which is it for you? Twhirl? Tweetdeck? Neither? What features helped you pick a winner?