Tweetie 2 has just launched and is now available for the iPhone and iPod touch, and the popular Twitter app brings with it many, many improvements and feature additions. Some of the more notable additions include full app persistence, which means that if you leave the app for any reason and come back to it, Tweetie 2 will remember exactly where you were. There’s also a nice offline mode, that lets you read, favorite, and even write drafts of tweets. Once you connect to the Internet again, everything gets synced up.

Many users have been waiting for video support and push notifications to come to Tweetie as well, and Tweetie 2 delivers on both fronts, but we feel both are lacking. With video support, we’d love to see Posterous added as a hosting service, as opposed to just yFrog and TwitVid. As is pertains to push notifications, Tweetie 2 gives it to you, but only on a per-user basis. So you have to go into each user that you want to receive notifications from, and enable them in a menu that is buried a couple of levels deep. We’d love an option to get all mentions and direct messages pushed to the phone from Tweetie 2, rather than having to rely on another Twitter app that can do it (like SimplyTweet) or an app dedicated to pushing content (like Boxcar.)

Still, don’t let those two issues deter you. We’ve been playing with it for a while, and can say without hesitation that Tweetie 2 is now our iPhone Twitter application of choice. It is fast, elegant, and a great deal at $2.99. You can buy Tweetie in the App Store now, we’ve got a full feature list for you after the jump. Oh, and feel free to follow Gear Live and App.tapper on Twitter!

• Seamlessly handle multiple Twitter accounts
• Explore all of Twitter, from your own timeline and mentions, to the favorite tweets of your followers and friends
• Full persistence: more than just caching tweets, Tweetie 2 restores your entire UI if you quit or get a phone call
• Fantastic new offline mode. Read, tweet, favorite, follow, save to Instapaper and more even when you don’t have a connection. Your actions will be synced as soon as you go back online
• Full landscape support (configurable of course)
• Live-filter your tweet stream
• Post photos and videos, even configure your own custom image host
• Vastly improved compose screen with recent hashtags, @people picker, URL shortening and more
• Compose screen multiple-attachments manager
• Drafts manager ensures you never lose a tweet (and you can even send drafts to Birdhouse)
• Link Twitter contacts to Address Book contacts
• Follow, unfollow, block and unblock from multiple accounts simultaneously
• Saved searches sync with Twitter.com and the upcoming Tweetie 2 for Mac
• Autocomplete recent searches and Go-to-user
• Threaded Direct Messages and improved conversation navigation
• TextExpander integration
• Rich integration with Follow Cost, Tweet Blocker, Favstar.fm and more
• Edit your own Twitter profile
• Specify custom API roots on a per-account basis
• Nearby map view
• Translate tweets
• Preview short URLs
• Safari bookmarklet support for easily sharing links
• In-app rich text email composition
• Tons of little things, including improved avatar caching, auto-refresh, refresh-all, seamless Twitlonger support, hashtag definitions and more
• This is just the beginning. Tweetie 2 is already built to take advantage of great new features coming from Twitter, so expect updates turning them on soon!

Get Tweetie 2 in the App Store for $2.99