Much can be said about the Twitter development community. Since day one, they have been building functionality on top of Twitter’s minimal web features to better the overall Twitter experience.

Initially we saw a frenzy of desktop and browser-based add-ons. Then, just as smartphones were becoming ubiquitous, the demand and interest in mobile Twitter applications became so high that application makers could not release updates fast enough.

As Twitter works to round out their portfolio of official applications — something we witnessed with release of the Blackberry app, acquisition of Tweetie and now the birth of Twitter for Android — developers building applications for Twitter are being eclipsed by the company that started it all. Suddenly third-party seems to be no party at all.

Fee Free or Die

Android Market, Blackberry App World and the App Store: Query each of them and you’ll find a bevy of Twitter apps. Next, judge the quality of the free apps against the quality of the paid apps. The trend has always been that the best Twitter apps come with a price tag. It’s not just mobile either; some of the best Mac-only Twitter apps come with a surcharge. More often than not, they’re better and more reliable than their free counterparts.

Enter Twitter. Things are about to change. The BlackBerry app is free. The iPhone and iPad app will be free. The Android app is free. There’s a trend here, one that’s likely to be repeated when (I believe it’s only a matter of time) Twitter releases a desktop application.

Unofficial apps with fees don’t stand much of chance (power users aside), even those with feature sets that are arguably better than Twitter’s offering. The official stamp of approval from Twitter will be more than enough for the average Twitter user.

Twitter, Features and the Cross-Platform War

In the midst of the Twitter application frenzy, we saw the best application makers rise up and compete head-to-head. Tweet Deck versus Seesmic. Tweetie versus Twitterific.

And then a funny thing started happening. Singular platform was no longer good enough. Both TweetDeck and Seesmic created a new layer specific to each of their applications, so that you could login to your TweetDeck or Seesmic account regardless of platform and maintain your Twitter settings. The feature back-and-forth continued, but the new battle became cross-platform.

Not many expected Twitter to become a contender in the cross-platform battle and yet here they are, putting on their boxing gloves and entering the ring as crowds cheer and developers moan.

If Twitter is everywhere, where can developers thrive? Perhaps the answer lies not in where, but how. Features will continue to be an important battle ground for third-parties — look no further than Hoot Suite or CoTweet for proof. Still, gone are the days when a third-party Twitter app is newsworthy or relevant on its own.

Now is the time to show me the metadata. Better yet, make Twitter a small part of something more significant — something larger. And no, a dual Twitter-Facebook client is not something grander.

Twitter’s Biggest Loser: Seesmic

Seesmic began as a video service. After the acquisition of Twhirl however, Seesmic phased out video in favor of Twitter. Now Seesmic offers web, desktop and mobile apps (Android and BlackBerry with iPhone in the works). All of the apps are robust, some offer Facebook integration and each take an “update once, publish everywhere” mentality thanks to the Ping.fm acquisition.

But what does Seesmic do that Twitter doesn’t? The world is aware of Twitter, but even Twitter is having a hard enough time driving home a value proposition. With that in mind, and Seesmic merely being a Twitter afterthought, does Seesmic even stand a chance? Especially given the hundreds of other Twitter application challengers.

Let’s face it: competition is a good thing. I happen to love Echofon for Mac, so too does my much younger fellow Twitter addict Justin Beiber. Ashton Kutcher tweets with Brizzly. Ellen and Lady Gaga tweet from the web. Shaq is a TweetGenius user.

Great. The plethora of available Twitter apps reward personal preference. There’s no reason why hobby Twitter app developers can’t continue to make a fair enough return with small fees or in-app ads. But Seesmic, as a heavily-funded startup ($12 million in total), has tied its yolk to Twitter and Twitter is trying to break free.

To that effect, Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur argues that, “Twitter official apps will always be about Twitter only. Seesmic apps are about helping you stay in touch with the news in realtime, your friends and build your brand across social networks which is very different, we don’t compete with them, we are on the user side who really doesn’t want to keep switching apps all the time.”

Facebook has a phenomenal iPhone app and Twitter’s Tweetie is also quite marvelous. We have a sneaking suspicion that users will opt for brand affinity and simplicity over anything else. Why get a copycat when you can get the real thing?

Fans of the popular Seesmic Twitter client’s web-based interface have some good news today. A major update to the web interface brings in a brand new contact manager, drag-and-drop full Twitter list management, photo uploads with geotagging, Tweetmeme support and a conversational threading feature that lets you call up back-and-forth exchanges you’ve had on Twitter into a collated conversation pop-up view.

We had a chance to check out the new features and are especially excited about the conversational threads feature. Pictured below, the new option aggregates Twitter conversations into a pop-up chronological view of @replies that transpired during the Twitter exchange between you and user user(s). It’s a great way to pull in a cohesive view of a Twitter conversation, available wherever you see the “in reply to” link beneath an individual tweet. It doesn’t even have to be your own conversation thread; you can enable it to get a clearer picture of conversations among those you follow as well.

The other big new addition is a contact manager, a new feature exclusive to Seesmic (pictured below). At the top left you’ll see toggle buttons between Home, Messages and Contacts. Clicking the Contacts button takes you to the new address book-like tool that collates information about your followers, the people following you, and members of any of your Lists. You can send messages and follow or unfollow individual Twitter users from here, see their bios, and drag and drop them into existing lists (or create new lists).

List management is another new feature in this Seesmic Web update, and the drag and drop functionality is intuitive and easy to use. Inline photo uploading is also now supported, with the status update entry box containing a “Picture” button at the bottom allowing you to include a photo in your tweet from either your local machine or the web. The “Location” button next to the Picture button also allows you to enable the geolocation information to be sent with your update (requires Google Gears to be installed).

In addition to the new functionality, Seesmic Web also got a number of design tweaks and improvements for an easier-to-use interface. Are you a user of Seesmic Web? What do you think of the changes?