Twitter for Mac now plays nice with OS X Notification Center

Twitter, the leading micro-blogging service turned media platform, has just updated its Mac client with a much-needed native support for OS X Mountain Lion’s Notification Center. The new Twitter version 2.2.1 also includes half a dozen fixes. The native OS X Notification Center support lets you not only receive notifications when someone mentions you or when you receive a direct message, but also for any new tweet surfacing in one’s stream…

As you can see in the screenshot top of post, Twitter’s Notifications section nested inside the app’s Preferences window lets you choose how you want to be notified for tweets, mentions and direct messages.

You can tell the app to only highlight the menu bar icon, badge its dock icon, push the alert through Apple’s Notification Center, or have them all combined to ensure you won’t miss a thing.

You’d be wise to enable alerts for mentions and direct messages only, unless you’re OK with notifications for every new tweet disrupting your workflow every few seconds.

As you can see below, the app previously supported the Growl notification system, a $3.99 download.

Provided you have Growl installed and have turned on notifications for the Twitter app in Growl’s settings, Twitter’s Preferences window will offer Growl alerts instead of Apple’s Notification Center.

Therefore, in order to use the OS X Notification Center rather than Growl, disable Twitter in Growl or quit the Growl app prior to launching Twitter.

Twitter for Mac version 2.2.1 This also includes the following changes:

• Fix for Growl notifications not working in Lion and Mountain Lion
• Fix for bug that prevented un-favoriting tweets
• Fix for missing account switcher in composer
• Fix for error message when posting a tweet with a pasted image
• Fix for enlarged avatar when dragging a tweet into an email
• Fixes for crashes and various other bugs

Per usual, Twitter for Mac and the iPhone/iPad are available free.

Of course, OS X Mountain Lion has built-in Twitter integration, but alerts are limited to mentions, replies and direct messages only.

As you can see above, OS X doesn’t support notifications for new tweets in the Notifications > Twitter section of System Preferences.

In related Twitter news, they just launched something called Lead Generation to Twitter Cards, basically an expandable tweets that let you show your interest in discounts promoted by your favorite brand.

This is what it looks like.

When a friend expands a Lead tweet, he or she will see a description of the offer, along with their name, @username and email address already populated within the Card, allowing them to send this information directly to you.

The Lead Generation Card will only be available to Twitter’s managed clients, but the company plans to launch the feature globally and to small- and medium-sized businesses soon.