While traveling for CES last week I was in pursuit of another Twitter application to use so I could update my own feed via TwitterBerry as well as the CrackBerry feed from one device. On Friday I finally received an invite to Socialscope the newest player in the Twitter game (keep reading after the jump - we have 200 free invites to give away!).  For the longest time I had been a big TwitterBerry fan, since it was the only app that came close to how a "true" Twitter application should look and function.  Yet from the minute I opened SocialScope, I was instantly drawn in.

The interface is clean and smooth. It is still only in Alpha, but already shows a ton of potential. SocialScope integrates your standard Twitter feed as well as Facebook status updates which is really cool. When you start up the application after registering, you are taken straight to your friend feed. The screen layout is plain and simple. Your friends timeline is shown including their avatars, tweet and post time. The feed is split up by day much as the standard BlackBerry message list is. The cool thing here is that instead of the "10 minutes ago from web" time stamp, the actual time the user posted is listed which I personally think is a better way to go. The other thing to note is that your friends show with their real name instead of their Twitter name (so my name would show as Adam instead of azeis).  Also a cool feature, but the option to choose which name to display may be a nice addition. The tabs on the top of the screen give you quick access to your Twitter feed, Facebook, replies, direct messages or your SocialScope which includes everything.  Clicking into an individual tweet gives you a number of options like reply and favorite.  You also have the option to add the user to your address book, which will add a URL with the users feed in your contact list. The More From Sender option opens a tab dedicated to that particular user which is a unique feature.  This is useful if you have a large number of friends, and want to be able to quickly view posts from certain users. 

Some features could be tweaked in my opinion, like the image cache for avatars and how the app recalls new messages. The avatars don't get cached as normal on your device which uses less space and makes the application quicker, but it seems that most times when starting SocialScope the images load fresh again and sometimes take a bit to appear. Also, having a "Mark As Read" like the standard message list would be helpful, since it seems like lots of times when starting the application fresh you have to scroll through a number of messages to get the icon to return to the read state.  

Updates are rolling out every few days with new features and it seems like the folks at SocialScope really look into user feedback. Notifications are on the way soon (as of now only the icon changes).  Overall I feel that SocialScope is a force to be reckoned with in the Twitter application race (however small it may be). Now that we've got Kevin (@crackberrykevin) addicted to Twitter maybe the race will heat up. We know Twitter functionality is coming to Viigo soon too. It's good to see new apps like this come down the line as it keeps things fresh and competitive.  

Get Your SocialScope Invite... HURRY!!!

Crackberry.com has received 200 Socialscope Alpha invites that will surely be gone fast.  Click the link below to sign up and download Socialscope Alpha now!

http://www.socialscope.net/index.php?r=cb1

If you missed out on the 200 invites you can follow @socialscope on Twitter and send them a Direct Message to try and receive an invite.