You won't find Twidge [1] on a list of the top 25 microblog clients. Such lists rarely mention command-line tools – which is too bad, because Twidge is not just more powerful than desktop tools but also easier to use in many ways.

In the classic free software tradition, Twidge was written "to scratch an itch." Long-time Debian developer and Twidge's creator John Goerzen explains, "I was using Twitter, but frustrated at having to go online to see what was waiting for me." For Goerzen, other shortcomings of the Twitter web interface included "not being able to clear most tweets as read and save some for replying to later, and not being able to use it offline." Additionally, Goerzen wanted Twitter to have the potential to interact with email – specifically, Postfix and Exim – and shell scripts, which explains the combination of "Twitter" and "bridge" in the name.

Now at version 1.10, Twidge has accomplished all these goals and gained a small following among Debian and Ubuntu users, as well as other distributions, including Arch Linux. The reason for this modest popularity is not hard to understand: Twidge is easy to learn and provides a much more uncluttered environment for reading tweets than Twitter's own web interface.

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