Product Review: TwitterPeek

I love the Peek’s slim, sleek look and it’s simplistic approach to the functions it carries out. There isn’t a lot of guesswork involved in operating this product (aside from the shortcuts) and for people who follow less than 1000 people on Twitter, it lives up to exactly what Peek designed it to accomplish (I’ll elaborate on the “less than 1000″ later in the post). To cover the basics, the device’s hardware features a cute little mail icon which blinks blue when you have new tweets, a scroll wheel for ease of navigating through screens, tweets, and options as well as making selections (pressing in on the scroll wheel has the same affect as pressing down a mouse button), a back button and power button, and a micro-USB port for connecting to the power adapter. I was expecting to get the baby blue color in the photos, but was pleasantly surprised to find one of the charcoal colored devices in the box. I’m not really big on pastel colors LOL

The TwitterPeek, like the Classic and Pronto versions, has a full QWERTY keyboard with shift functions for symbols and punctuation. There is also a lock key which prevents unintended key presses. The scroll wheel allows up and down navigation; pressing the shift key while scrolling up or down causes the curser to move left and right (many thanks to Shynea for the “shift” tip! It seriously is NOT included in the quick start guide but is in the information found on the website). I love that the period and the “@” sign can be typed in without pressing shift since those are two of the most used characters. Some of the great things I found different about tweeting with the TwitterPeek as opposed to using a cell phone include:

• The TwitterPeek allows you to view the tweets you’ve sent, see your mentions and your DMs, and view tweets from specific people. It constantly downloads your tweets so there is no waiting for your tweets to download, as long as you are within the capacity of the device (there are more details on that later in this post…)
• The TwitterPeek supports viewing of TwitPics and links. Even though there is not a web browser installed on the device, the TwitterPeek will download the hyperlink source as a text file so that you are able to read the contents.
• The TwitterPeek stores up to 2000 tweets! Enough said…
• I wasn’t sure that I would like the keypad when I first began using it, but I actually grew to favor it since I have chubby fingers – the way the keys are positioned and the amount of pressure required to actually press them down means that I don’t inadvertently press extra keys as I type, which is great :)
• Holding keys down for a couple of seconds makes the shift key obsolete, which is a plus. I like having a shift key because sometimes I don’t want to have to wait for a symbol or a capital letter to appear. However, if I am holding my baby {or pushing a shopping cart – yes, I am a Twitter addict} and I only have one hand to type with, I prefer to not have to press additional keys and it helps that I have the option of cutting out shift completely if necessary.
• There are easily identifiable keyboard shortcuts for most of the common tasks. This helps to minimize the use of the scroll wheel and avoids the need to navigate through menus to do things such as send, reply to or retweet a tweet, view your @’s, access and send DMs, and jump to the first or last tweets in the stream (or optionally, page up and page down).

Before I get into the rest of this very extensive review, I want to first say that I see the TwitterPeek as being a fun gift for teens who don’t have super large networks. I imagine it would be a great way for them to communicate with friends and even update their Facebook and/or MySpace profiles since there are services available to sync the three social networks simply by updating Twitter. Now, on to the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The specs on the TwitterPeek claim that the battery will hold up for several days. I found that mine would discharge within a matter of about 4-5 hours without me even using it. I also constantly had problems with the TwitterPeek not downloading new tweets, the screen blacking out, and the device becoming unresponsive so I would have to remove the battery to power it down since the power button itself would not respond – then I found myself having to reset it and actually reinput my account information for it to begin pulling my tweets again.

I called tech support several times about the issues I had and basically was informed that the TwitterPeek supports up to 1000 people you follow. If you follow more, you will likely have problems with the device freezing, shutting down, and not downloading tweets as it should. I suppose I can understand how overwhelmed a device can become by downloading hundreds of tweets every minute or so, BUT that is what this device was designed to do, right? After learning about the 1000-you-follow-limit imposed by Peek’s system, I reset the device {again} and set it up with my ministry account which is much smaller than my main account and it actually worked like a charm. I didn’t have any problems with it not downloading tweets, freezing, or the dreaded black screen for the smaller account.

If you do not follow more than a few hundred people and you want a product designed specifically for Tweeting, the TwitterPeek seems to be a great option for people who don’t want to spend money on an unlimited texting and/or data plan or who want more features than their cellular provider provides to tweet on the go. The TwitterPeek is available for $99 which includes 6 months of service and then charges a monthly fee of $7.95 thereafter. You also have the option of purchasing the device for $199 which includes lifetime service with no monthly fee. The downside is that – obviously – the only thing the TwitterPeek does is tweet, which means you will need another device if you need to be able to get email and/or text messages on the go… and another device if you need to make calls. You see where I’m going with this.

One thing I wondered when I began using this device is why they didn’t simply add this functionality to a new release of the Peek Pronto so that there would be ONE device which would allow you unlimited tweets, texts, and email. It seems to be much more practical to integrate these features than to separate them into two devices, especially since (from what I understand) PeekFeed is not accepting new applications so new owners of the Peek Pronto aren’t able to download their tweet streams at all.

The TwitterPeek would be more appealing by implementing the following:

• There should be a setting in place that allows the subscriber to select a group of people they follow whose tweets are of top priority. This way, the problem of the device freezing due to excessive tweets being downloaded would be resolved. In addition, they would not have to see tweets on the Peek from users they don’t necessarily need to view on the go. I think this would best be achieved by creating a web-based user interface in the subscriber’s online account which would import specific Twitter lists in a manner similar to that of TweepML.com’s process – using XML. The user could add the people they want to see on their Peek to a certain list and then voila, they’re good to go :)
• A zoom feature would help optimize the viewable TwitPic feature as it is often difficult to make out what is in the photos.
• Being able to download a user’s tweet stream on demand – maybe even those that you are not following – would be awesome. Likewise, being able to view the tweet someone is replying to would be great as well. Currently, you can only view the tweet stream of people you follow – and of their stream, you are only able to view the tweets that have been downloaded into the Peek device.
• There is no user manual. Seriously. It came with a quick start guide and a terms of service book. When asked about this, the tech guy at Peek said there is a FAQs section on their website with additional information. Really? Um… In my Mississippi voice, “I’ma need y’all to put that sucker in PRINT.”
• Having the option to unfollow people from the TwitterPeek would be nice.  You can follow people from the TwitterPeek by sending a tweet with ‘f Username’ but – to my knowledge from reading their FAQs – there is no way to unfollow a person with the TwitterPeek.
• There should be user-specified filters enabled to provide the subscriber more control over the information on the Peek, such as the option to expand the tweets on the home screen so that they are readable in their entirety without clicking on each one (as it is now) and perhaps even the ability to clear specific tweets after viewing them.
• A great setting would be one that controls downloading tweets. I would prefer to be able to tell the device when to – and when not to – download tweets. If I want to go a while without downloading the main stream but still be able to send tweets and get my replies/mentions and my DM’s, I would love having the option to do so. This would also help to conserve battery power in the event that I know I will be away from a power source for an extended period of time.

If you are looking for a fun, affordable device to help you manage your Twitter account, the TwitterPeek is great as long as you don’t have an extensive network. As I mentioned before, it would be an awesome Christmas gift for any teen who makes regular use of the Twitter service. It worked like a lil pro with my ministry account, but definitely needs help with my main account. I’m confident that in future releases and updates, the kinks will be worked out – possibly through the features I mentioned. The fact that they didn’t think of these makes me wonder if anyone at Peek, Inc. actually uses Twitter… perhaps they needed one good power tweeter to set the process in motion!

I wonder if they’ll cut me a check for my suggestions? :)

I received no monetary compensation for this review. Peek, Inc. provided me with one unit – the TwitterPeek – for the purpose of giving feedback on my experience.

Until next time...



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