If you thought microblogging using Twitter and Identica was as simple as tapping out 140 characters once a day describing what kind of food you just ate, you'd be wrong. In fact, there's a huge amount of functionality to help you follow and be followed online, and if you're a Linux user you're spoiled for choice.

So, we spent some time wading through the collection of available apps, put them all through their paces, and wrote up our results below - read on!

To-wit to-woo!

Who would have thought microblogging would be so popular? 2009 was probably the 'crossover' year for microblogging and Twitter in particular, as high-profile people started to massage their egos with some online idolatry, and some actual important stuff happened too - who can forget the picture of the plane in the Hudson or the neat circumvention of English libel law in the row over that company the lawyers said we couldn't mention?

As well as becoming more popular, Twitter has become more complex. You might only have 140 characters, but there's a lot you can pack into those bytes if you try - URL shortening has found another niche market, as well as plenty of web services offering picture hosting. So, for what seems a simple premise, there is a lot of additional functionality you may want from a microblogging tool.

We only had room for eight candidates in our test, so we had to draw up some guidelines. We ignored the command-line clients (bti is probably the best if you want this), web browsers and their add-ons, and other software that can interface with Twitter but whose main purpose is not microblogging.

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