Adium announces Twitter support

Coming in 1.4 update

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13 March 2009 10:38 GMT / By Verity Burns

Adium, the free instant messaging client for Mac OS X users, has announced it is working on Twitter support for its next update.

The program currently provides users with a one stop shop for all their communication needs, with the ability to access services like MSN and Yahoo Messenger, Skype, Facebook Chat and Bonjour directly through the client.

A post by developer Zac West on the Adium blog said that he had now managed to create a Twitter client for the messaging service - something users had unsurprisingly been asking for for over a year.

As for how it will work, West explained that the people you follow will be displayed in a group on the Contact List. Adding or removing them will directly follow or unfollow them on Twitter, and chatting with them will send a direct message to their Twitter inbox.

In a separate pop-out box called "Timeline", you'll find tweets from all your contacts similarly to the Twitter homepage. Closing this box will allow you to keep your place in tweets so when you re-open it you'll start where you left off, but if you're too busy to catch up, you can force an update to see the most recent tweets instead.

As for @Replies, they'll be highlighted so you don't miss them, and you can set a sound to go off every time you receive one as well.

Finally, West says you'll be able to access information on your Twitter contacts from their profiles through Adium. This includes their bio information and followers, as well as their last 20 tweets.

Apparently the ideas for the new Twitter client haven't finished yet, with talk of automatic picture uploading to Twitpic among them, and West is openly asking for suggestions of features users would like to see.

All will be revealed in the Adium 1.4 update, although there are apparently still a few months before we'll even see a beta.

We'll keep you posted.