There are plenty of iPhone apps for Twitter available in the iTunes App Store and while most offer the basic functions of posting and reading timelines, the recently-released iPhone app Feathers (99 cents) isn’t a traditional Twitter platform. Instead of focusing on the social networking part of Twitter, Features puts its emphasis on helping users make their tweets stand out through the addition of text styles and unique characters and symbols that can be seen universally.
To get started, tap “ABC” to enter in your message using normal text. Then select “Style” to select one of a dozen text styles, such as upside-down, Morse code or sphere to jazz up your tweet. If you’re looking to add symbols, tap the emoticon to see the character keyboard. The larger gray buttons at the bottom contain additional keyboards, too, meaning that Feathers offers more than 200 Unicode symbols for your use. In the lower left corner of the text box, you’ll see a magnifying glass that will encode your tweets so only other Feathers’ users will be able to read them.
My favorite feature of Feathers is the “magic quote” button found in the top left corner. Tapping that button after you’ve entered a Tweet will convert your dumb quotes to smart quotes (that means they will curl, rather than appear straight), turn two dashes into em-dashes and turn three dots into an ellipsis. Not only does this button allow you to tweet with correct punctuation, it will also save you character space.
Although you can use Feathers to post directly to your Twitter account — tap the bird, which fills with green as you reach your character limit, to do so — you don’t have to. Upon exiting the iPhone app, anything you’ve typed will be copied to the clipboard, which means you can insert it into email, post it to Facebook or even send it through a text message.
