Thoughts from Ben Brooks on the recent Twitter changes:

The iPhone app though — it is the most used app on my iPhone. My iPhone is Twitter.

The design changes are just design changes and I mostly think they look nice. These changes are a nice new look at Twitter and I have no qualms with them — even though the top blue bar is a bit bright.

I really like the new ‘Connect’ tab because of the ‘Interactions’ menu that shows not just @replies, but also shows new followers, retweets, and favorites. That’s a welcomed change and I think pretty helpful for all users.

The design has grown on me, and the Interactions tab with new followers, RTs and favorites is nice. So far, I agree — down to the the top blue bar. (I think it’s ugly and wish they would tone it down quite a bit.)

What is absolutely crazy — what drives me nuts — is the ditching of the swipe-to-act gesture. In previous versions you could swipe left or right on a tweet to slide open an action menu. From there you could quickly favorite, retweet, Instapaper, or reply to the tweet.

That was the single most fantastic thing about the app.

Now it’s gone.

I think the reason this was removed is explained by the direction Twitter is moving: gone are the days when Twitter was a tool because now Twitter is an environment.

I’m in agreement here, but according to Twitter Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey, those functionalities will be coming back “at some point”. It’s the “at some point” that concerns me.

But if “swiping” returns, I might be tempted to return to Twitter for iPhone. But for now, I’m setting up shop in Tweetbot, for the very reason that Ben states at the end of his post:

The latest updates to Twitter seem to be saying: “stick around, don’t leave.”

I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but it’s certainly not how I am used to using Twitter.

Not only is it not how I’m used to using Twitter, I don’t want to use Twitter that way. At least not right now. And while I have problems with Tweetbot, it’s far more inline with the way I like to use Twitter than Twitter is.