San Francisco — If you own a BlackBerry and constantly hooked to Twitter we have good news for wielding social networking addicts, as RIM has announced the beta release of Twitter for BlackBerry 1.1 on Feb. 22 with a host of novel features including geotagging, deeper integration with social feeds, new gesture support and more.
The updated app may not match the excellence of its Android and iOS counterparts, but it brings some much needed improvements to the RIM’s smartphone range. The beta update includes features which some users have been requesting to have features like geotagging, which now allows users to identify their location with their tweets; new language support, including Polish and Czech; cleaner interfaces; new notifications and other tweaks.
However, the popularity of Twitter has not been lost on the BlackBerry, as the Twitter for BlackBerry application has been downloaded more than 10 million times, RIM officials said.
Interestingly, among some of the other smartly enhanced features in version 1.1, there is now deeper integration with Social Feeds and “retweet” updates, which empowers users to perform Twitter actions right from Social Feeds without even launching the app.
In addition to that, direct Messages are now knitted, so you do not have to scratch your head trying to remember how a conversation went, and similarly, with retweet updates, retweets now appear in the Home timeline with a tag of “retweeted by you,” promptly alerting users that a retweet has been sent.
Moreover, on top of that, @mention Push Notifications, where users are now notified with push notifications to the ribbon when they have @mentions, helping users quickly reply to @mentions, which is a huge addition. Also the feature #Topic Autocomplete suggestions for hashtags based on what you had used before, and the Social Feeds app can now handle a few more things on its own without having to launch into the dedicated Twitter client.
Furthermore, in the new release, ‘Direct Messages’ has been renamed “Messages”. Direct messages are now knitted in the style of BlackBerry Messenger conversations. Related messages are grouped together, making the direct message area less cluttered.
Finally, there is a nice gesture support for users with touch-screen BlackBerries, allowing users to refresh a page by simply dragging a finger down the screen and releasing it. As is, Twitter for BlackBerry already plays nice with left and right gestures and in the Messages app, when flipping through e-mails.
As usual, Twitter for BlackBerry is tight knitted with the native address book, support for organized lists (a must if you follow a lot of people), saved searches to keep up-to-date on your favorite topics, and of course the usual replying, tweeting, and messaging that Twitter’s all about.
Twitter for Blackberry v1.1 is now available to download for free from BlackBerry Beta Zone, and is compatible with devices running BlackBerry OS 4.5 or higher and requires a data plan.