loading_1TweetCaster I thought that perhaps I had found something useful, something better than Hootsuite and Echofon. But I rapidly realised I had not and the dread of a week using the app slowly sunk in.

loading_5Adding accounts to TweetCaster was no more complex than any of the previous apps I’d tried over the last few week. HootSuite still held the advantage due to its webinterface but other than that they were all of a muchness. So with the initial account addition done you’d perhaps expect the operating experience to be somewhat similar as well.

It was not - for some reason there was no common Timeline loading_4this meant I had to jump between all my accounts to keep them up to date. This was slow and very repetitive since I  often follow the same people from different accounts. Do not ask and I will not need to explain why!

I bet you are wondering about fullscreen adverts about now are you not? Well yes there are plenty of fullscreen adverts in Tweetcaster.

Screenshot_2014-02-08-10-57-03full_screen_addThey are the most annoying things of all time. I mean you could tolerate one or two now and again - all the apps I tested had them but I when the fullscreen advert looks like this - yes these are real screenshots of the fullscreen adverts.

No there are not the worse I think the worse advert I was forced to endure was this one right here. This is NOT doctored or altered in anyway. This is genuinely the screenshot of a completely blank fullscreen advert which I had to click on the close “X” in order to use the app.

Screenshot_2014-02-08-10-25-42So other than completely blank or tiny imaged fullscreen adverts what else was “interesting” in TweetCaster?

loadingI did have quite a lot of downtime with this app mainly producing screens telling me it was loading something.

I am not entirely certain what it was loading as often when it had finished loading it would then tell me something like nothing found or “Failed to load data”. I got used to seeing these messages quite a lot, yes, quite a lot indeed.tweetcaster-failed_to_load

Especially when I was trying to find people to tweet to! Or interactions. Lots and lots of time spent loading, loading, still loading and then……nothing.

Pictures

So this was definitely an odd app with regards to pictures. Some tweeted in the correct orientation whilst others did not. I do not know why but that is how this app roles?

Notifications

loading_2Yes I got some but not always the ones I was expecting. I did activate notifications when a particular account tweeted - mainly because I was struggling due to the lagginess and the long loading times to actually keep up with all my friendly neighbourhood tweeting.

Tweeting

Well I did do some tweeting but I did spend quite a lot of the week looking at the TweetCaster splash screen, a Loading…. imageloading_3 or a completely blank screen. I would say that it was network related but to be honest it was not. It was all down to the app. I had the same experience on the mobile or WiFi networks at home and work.

Due to the way the app is laid out I did not really have any issues tweeting under the accounts I thought I was tweeting as. But due to the general rubbishness I really had to force myself to use the app to tweet.

Conclusion

full_screen_ad-2I guess the best way to conclude is to answer some questions:

Did I tweet more than using Twitters’ own app?

No not really. At first yes but within hours I was already struggling with the constant loading screens, the TweetCaster splashscreen and the fullscreen adverts - a perfect storm of annoyance.

Would I pay to get the added features?

No. Next question.

By Sunday had you had enough?

tweetcaster_uninstalledYes. In fact since this was the last app I was testing I even left it on my phone past Sunday. No matter though as I did not use it anymore than I had during the week! So I was finally glad when I got to see the Uninstall finished message.

**Note: Images taken from in app activity. Logos belong to the originating parties. **