NFL Player Tweets iPhone app fails to stand out from its free competitors

It’s already been quite a year for the Chicago Bears. The team now has a franchise quarterback, but their franchise linebacker is lost for the season. They have an impressive win over the last year’s Super Bowl champs, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and an embarrassing 45-10 loss against the Cincinnati Bengals, led by the Bears’ former running back, Cedric Benson.

The only thing that would be a surprise at this point would be if there were no more surprises on the horizon. It’s a wonder that this town loves the team so much, but for some reason we do.

The latest app for you Bears fanatics — or any NFL fan for that matter — is NFL Player Tweets. Stepmule Media has released the series of apps for all 32 NFL teams, though unfortunately, there’s nothing here we haven’t seen before.

Each app includes a player’s section as well as a local media and national media section. For example, with the Bears you get Twitter feeds from players like quarterback Jay Cutler and receiver Devin Hester as well as feeds from Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune and ESPNChicago.com reporters.

As with similar apps, the player tweets are hit or miss — but mostly miss. Too many of the accounts aren’t updated frequently and most of the others simply aren’t that entertaining.

While I love the media sections in NFL Player Tweets, I have to mention that you get something very similar with Realtime Pro Football. And while Realtime is a free download, this app costs 99 cents. Also, if you’re into the player’s tweets, you can get many of them for free with NFL Pro Tweets.

So my big problem with NFL Player Tweets isn’t that it’s a bad app, but the only thing this app has those others don’t is a team schedule — though it’s a team schedule with no scores.

All told, as confusing as the Bears have been this season, I’m more confused as to why this app costs 99 cents. It’s decent enough, but given the free alternatives, I’m not sure why anyone would give it a shot.

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