TweetDeck Nears For The iPhone. Set To Battle Tweetie

Digg co-founder Kevin Rose got his hands on a new iPhone application that a lot of people will be interested in: TweetDeck. Yes, the popular desktop application is coming to the iPhone “soon,” according to Rose. But what’s really interesting about it is his statement that, “I can say now that it’s going to replace tweetie as my default twitter iphone app.”

That’s a bold statement, given that Tweetie has been the iPhone app of choice for many diehard Twitter users for months now. And this move by TweetDeck is an interesting one because it clearly signals a budding rivalry between the two, as Tweetie just recently moved from the iPhone to the desktop as well. Now TweetDeck will move the opposite way. Another player in this game, Seesmic, is also about to launch an iPhone app.

So what features does TweetDeck offer? Rose’s details are scant, but he offers up a lot of pictures. And here’s features he did highlight:

– Column based friend groups! (like TweetDeck desktop)
– TweetDeck desktop syncing (make a change on the iphone and it’s reflected back on the PC)
– Facebook toolbar like status updates

Update: We’ve just seen TweetDeck running on the iPhone as well. Easily the best feature about it is the way you can group those you are following together. I’ve basically wanted this forever on Twitter, and it’s one of the reasons why I really like FriendFeed — and increasingly Facebook. But grouping seems to make even more sense on the iPhone, where the screen is obviously much smaller, and it’s harder to see more tweets. The way these groups are handled is very nice. You simply swipe from side to side to switch between them.

TweetDeck for the iPhone is currently in the process of being reviewed by the App Store. It’s been about 9 days since it was submitted, we’re told, but Apple is apparently backed up a bit on approvals following its big WWDC conference, so it should launch any day now.

[photos via Kevin Rose blogg]