Ginx is a web based twitter client. I started using it because Ginx let me access Twitter stream where Twitter was blocked.
The primary advantage of using Ginx is the way it lets you know the URL before you click.
The other benefit of Ginx is auto URL shortening, a service which not many twitter clients provide. When you click the Ginx URL, it opens up on a page similar to Digg Bar. Ginx, however, supports the URL shortening and expanding only for one URL per tweet.
Ginx also provides the history of clicked links as a stream.
The demerits of Ginx overshadow its merits, probably because it is still in pre-alpha phase.
- Sync up with Twitter was a major issue which they seemed to have fixed. But I still see a lag in the stream and is not quick in its sync up with Twitter.
- Although Twitter has updated "replies" to "mentions", Ginx is still lagging behind in the implementation when clients like Slandr rolled it out immediately on their versions.
- Ginx does not show you which client was used (Eg: TweetDeck, Web, Twhirl etc.) to send the tweet by any user which most twitter clients support.
- I did see another issue which was pretty hard to digest. A particular user showed up on my stream whom I had un-followed using Ginx. Now that is not cool!
- The stats keeps on changing and most of the times does not show the accurate count. By stats, I mean number of people I am following, my followers and number of updates.
Even manual sync with Twitter does not fix this. The stats shown above is when I have 252 followers and over 1700 updates.
- It shows all sorts of replies sent by the people I follow which clutters the view on my Ginx page. Twitter and most clients like Slandr, TweetDeck etc. handles this as per Twitter configuration.
Ginx is a good concept with its URL shortening/preview functionality, but they have to work on getting the basic functionalities stable. Real-time is another "in" thing which, if they implement, can make it more popular. In its current form, it is hard for Ginx to pick up market share in this competing environment.
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