SocialScope for BlackBerry

A bunch of us here at BGR have been using SocialScope for BlackBerry for the last couple weeks and boy, does this application rock! For those of you not keeping up with the news, it’s a brand new app that extends Twitter and Facebook functionality right to the ‘Berry. For starters, at least for me personally, it took a little bit of a break-in period to get used to the layout and organization of it as opposed to TwitterBerry, but I think we can pretty much go and call out one of our “dead and buried” statements for TwitterBerry. If they don’t come with something incredible extremely soon, we think SocialScope will end up kicking the crap out of them and stealing their lunch money. It’s chocked full of features, and everything works real smoothly together. One of our favorite ones? Notifications are pretty much damn near real-time.

Everything is laid out to you in tabs and each tab is color-coded so when you want to view everything in one window — things like @replies, direct messages, Twitter, Facebook — you’ll know what’s what. Media plays a big part in here with integration into the Camera API and the Media application. You’re also only one click away from TwitPic heaven. In terms of reliability, there’s been practically no issues especially for an application that’s in alpha. We had one bug where thumbnails weren’t loading (we think it was because we’re on a BES) but it was quickly resolved. We’d love more control over the application, like more settings and more things to play with, but it’s really solid.

All in all, to sum up my part, I’d say this is the finest Twitter application for the BlackBerry yet and in terms of the Facebook part, it’s getting there. Status updates are great in here, but since it misses other features like accepting/declining friend requests, commenting on walls and all that, we’ll look forward to added functionality in the future. We won’t just give you my take, though; here’s what the other members of the BGR team had to say:

Zach: Wait, what application are we testing? — Before SocialScope, I had been using slandr.net after being less than happy with native BlackBerry options such as TwitterBerry and the like. SocialScope was really the first app to hold my attention for more than a few minutes and it reeled me right in. The tabbed interface is awesome, the GUI is clean and well-designed, BlackBerry shortcut support is fantastic, the near real-time updates are perfect for stalkers Twitter addicts and the new message indicator on the app icon is gravy. Having Facebook status / photo integration is just an added bonus for me… I think the Yankees actually had talent to match their payroll the last time I cared about Facebook. There are a few tweaks I’d like to see before I hand SocialScope a crown though, namely a “more from user” option on each individual tweet page (rather than having to go back to the overview and hitting menu -> more to see a user’s stream), the option to only display the new message indicator icon for @replies or directs and the ability to follow new people @ed in your stream - though I’m not sure the Twitter API even supports that function. Little gripes aside, 99% of my Twitter usage is mobile and the Bold is still my main handset so SocialScope is definitely a must-have for me.

Mikey: Having used just about every Twitter application under the sun on my BlackBerry, I’ve always felt grossly let down by the lack of GUI and features, push notification in particular. SocialScope is the closest thing to the mobile Twitter application I’ve been dreaming about. The scariest thing? It’s still a very early alpha release. Without SocialScope, Twitter would be dead to me.

Marc: With SocialScope, I really don’t need a reason to have both TwitterBerry and Facebook on my BlackBerry since this seems to be the one-stop shop for two of my biggest social networks. Being able to make updates through one application is great and the fact that standard BlackBerry shortcut keys work within the app is even better. For anyone that uses a BlackBerry and checks their Facebook account or Twitter feed consistently, there’s no reason not to get this app.

Josh: I only got into Twitter pretty recently so my time was limited using other programs on my BlackBerry. SocialScope is pretty amazing though, combining both my Twitter and Facebook accounts. Plus, the picture uploading to TwitPic is just stellar. I really need to be able to set an auto-check interval, as I don’t find the push notifications work perfectly at this point.

For more information, hit BerryReview, who was the first to manhandle this thing, and hit up SocialScope to apply for the alpha program.