I want to preface this article by saying that I still love Twitter. After some initial scepticism and a rocky start, I’m now a fully fledged Tweeter (Twitterer? Twit?), managing two separate accounts and loving every letter of it.

So when I say I’ve come across something that I think is better than Twitter.com, I don’t want you to think that I’ve given up on everyone’s favourite little blue bird. I’ve just found another site that I prefer to the original.
iTweet.net is a slick new web interface for Twitter that provides all the functionality of the original site (like your ‘home’ page and separate pages for your @replies and direct messages) while adding quite a few more  tricks and tools.

iTweet for example, integrates Twitter search with a handy box right under your personal stats making it always and easily accessible without you having to navigate to a separate URL.

Itweet, (unlike Twitter) boasts clickable hashtags. The site picks up any post containing the tell-tale hash character, highlights the attached tag and turns it into a link to other posts containing the same tag. This is a great little feature for following topics of interest, such as the No Clean Feed campaign (#nocleanfeed) or the recent, violent storms in Brisbane (#bnestorm).

Clicking on profile pictures embedded in your friend’s Tweets reveals a short bio that includes that person’s location, website and number of followers – a handy refresher if you follow more people than you can remember by face alone. Retweeting is also just a click away when using iTweet as every update you see (except direct messages) has a clever little ‘RT’ icon bundled beside the fav-star and reply button.

You can personalise the how the site operates (whether the page auto-refreshes and whether your Enter key acts as a ‘post’ command) using settings found in the control pane located on the right of the page (just like the original site). And, even though iTweet brings all of these new features to you in a slick and sexy interface, it also lets you import your personalised wallpaper from your original Twitter page, just to make you feel even more at home.

I’ve started using iTweet as my default Twitter interface predominantly because I like its look, feel and features, but also because doing allows me to conveniently save login details for both of my accounts. I simply go to iTweet.net to post to my primary Twitter account (@rooksuicide) or to Twitter.com to post to my secondary account (@rookmarks).

Oh, and a neat side-effect benefit of iTweet (and one that is benefiting Tweeters in stricter offices) is that it easily circumvents any domain filter your workplace may have set for Twitter.com! So even if you don’t adopt iTweet.net right now, it might be a handy site to bookmark for future use should your boss ever decide Twitter.com is bad for business…