FlyChat is an application for the iPhone and iPod Touch that allows you to send out a message to any random person in the world or to a specific friend or network of friends. We've seen apps like this before, where you randomly send out a message hoping for a reply. It's like sending out a message in a bottle. This app is interesting, but it definitely won't replace your Twitter client.

When you first open the app, you'll have at least one fly on the screen with only three buttons at the top. You can choose to view the flies in day or night mode. In night mode, the flies are shown green to let you know it has a message attached. The yellow fly is empty and touching it will allow you to start typing a message to send out. Red flies are messages from friends. These flies will actually fly and move around the screen, which is only entertaining for a short while.

When you tap the yellow fly to begin a new message, a menu appears with several options. You can choose to send your message to the world, country, city, institution or a friend. Once you choose where you want to send your message to, you are brought to the compose screen to write your message. Here, you have several options including setting a theme, amount of people to send to and a tag. When you set a theme for your message you're really choosing a topic and only those people that are interested in that topic will receive your message. You can do the same for yourself, so if you only like sports, you can set it so you will only receive messages about sports. This is a good idea, but for it to really work the sender has to remember to set a theme/topic for their message. Tags are simply little emotion symbols like a smiley face or a thumbs up. You can also choose to send your message to only one person or up to ten random people. When typing your message, there is no landscape mode available, only portrait mode.

After you've sent your message, the only other option is to read any incoming messages you may have. These may be replies to your message or they could be random thoughts from people around the world. Most messages you'll receive will either be spam or just silly, pointless chatter. The major problem with this app is the lack of a strong user base. I'm sure if more people were using it, you would receive better content.

FlyChat's UI is actually the best part of the app. The menus are not only very functional, but are also aesthetically pleasing. However, even though the idea is creative, the use of animated flies are not really practical. When you receive multiple messages at once, you have no way of telling which message came first or last. All you see are flies moving around the screen. The biggest problem with this application is that it does the same job that Twitter does, and it just can't compete with the vast selection of great Twitter apps out there. When composing a message, there are no options for attaching a picture, audio clip or video clip. These are becoming standard features in messaging apps that FlyChat is lacking. The main idea of FlyChat is to send out a message and hopefully get a reply. But, it only goes out to other FlyChat users and right now, there doesn't seem to be that many. Also, when you do receive a message, there is no way to know unless you run the application. There are no push or email notifications available. FlyChat is just not practical to use at this time. I recommend passing on it and sticking with a solid Twitter application.