One thing I noticed pretty early on once the BlackBerry Z10 was launched was some peoples frustration with the new native Twitter application. Not so much with how the app performs but with how to send direct messages. Because of the integrated accounts we now have within the BlackBerry Hub, Twitter is there too, so DM's are done from here and not from the Twitter app itself. That may seem odd at first but one you actually use a BlackBerry 10 smartphone you will see that it makes perfect sense.
The Twitter app itself is not dissimilar from the versions on iOS and Android. Some of the tabs are positioned at the bottom of the screen with BlackBerry 10 to allow for one handed use which is a bonus, but apart from the difference in direct messaging they are fairly unified which will please new BlackBerry users.
When it comes to viewing your timeline the app performs beautifully smoothly and scrolling up and down the tweets is quite a joy. Updating the timeline is achieved by pulling down to refresh much like on the other platforms. If you want to jump to the newest tweet from anywhere in the timeline it is just a case of tapping the 'Home' tab at the bottom left of the screen.
As you will see from the video, BlackBerry 10 gives us two options when it comes to interacting with Twitter contacts. First up - you can tap the tweet where it will open up in a new page and give you onscreen icons to retweet, reply etc. But by far the quickest and most natural way to respond (once you have become familiar with the BB10 way) is to do a long hold on the tweet and options will pop up on the right of the screen. From here you can just scroll down to the action you wish. For example: if you want to retweet you just scroll to the retweet tab and release - sorted.
The other tabs along the base of the display are all standard stuff. You have a 'Connect' tab where you can view your mentions and reply to them with either of the two ways as mentioned above. Then we have the 'Discover' tab where you can view trends and find new people to follow on Twitter. And last but not least is the 'Me' tab where you can check out your conversations on Twitter as well as view a list of your followers and the people you follow.
On to the interesting part - Direct Messages. You won't find them in the app itself so once you have read this you can stop being puzzled and confused. All DM's are housed within the BlackBerry Hub. Creating a new DM is done just the same as you would start a new email or sms. Just go yo the hub, press 'compose' and select Twitter. The message will then open and you can start typing in the name of the recipient. Enter the text you wish, press send and off it goes - simple.
As you receive direct messages you will be notified in the Hub just the same as any other account that it integrated. Conversations will be shown in a threaded form as you can see below and it works really well. After using DM's in this format for a few weeks it feels perfectly natural and I much prefer it this way instead of controlling them from within the app.
