Mixero - First Look

Today I got invited to beta-test a new desktop Twitter manager called Mixero. While I will do a more in-depth, longer-term review shortly, let's call this a "day one" observation.

First off, the premise of Mixero is completely the opposite of my current Twitter app, TweetDeck. TweetDeck tries to get all your info in one place; Mixero is meant to allow you to filter your incoming information into a more usable form. My first reaction to this is "Well, if I didn't want someone's tweets, I would just not follow them." Right away, this seems more suited for someone managing an institutional Twitter account than a personal one.

Installation was one-click simple. Mixero uses the Adobe Air runtime environment (the same as TweetDeck) to connect to Twitter's API. Log in, type in your invite code (for the beta) and you're there.

It's a nice clean interface. What you have to start is your Timeline to the left, your Active Window in the middle, and your Contacts on the right. Double clicking a contact moves them to the Active Window. Once there, little flags pop up with the number of unread tweets and DMs. Contacts in the active window are added to the Timeline, so you see their tweets. If their not active, you don't see the tweets.

Making groups is easy as well. Hover over a contact, click the "Groups" button. A popup allows you to create a group, or select/deselect an existing group for the contact. You can add groups to the Active Window as well, and see all the tweets in a group.

One issue: Mixero apparently made a ton of calls to Twitter's API during the setup. Each user is limited to 100 calls per hour from 3rd party applications. (The Twitter webpage does not count.) So after ten minutes of running it alongside TweetDeck, they were both locked out until my next reset. (Notice the 0/100 talley in the corner of the TweetDeck screenshot below. ) I'll have to watch that in the future.

I haven't played with any of the other toys yet. (Channels and customization, etc...) Compare the Mixero UI to the TweetDeck one below it.

I miss the Facebook column, but supposedly Mixero is looking into adding other social networking sites. One would think FB is high on the list.

Stay tuned, campers...