By: Hillel Fuld
As time goes by, and more specifically the time by which most skeptics predicted that the “Twitter trend/fad” would end, I am only growing more dependent on Twitter (Follow me here) and using it more and more often for new purposes. I now use Twitter as my primary professional networking tool (yes I use LinkedIn, but somehow they compliment each other perfectly), my almost exclusive source of breaking news, my main online communication tool (replacing email almost), not to mention the inspiration for almost all blog posts that you see here.
The way I use Twitter has completely changed over the past year. Back then, I followed a few hundred people, so following their tweets was a simple task. Today, I follow close to 10,000 (9,937 to be exact) and without a reliable and efficient Twitter application, handling that amount of data would be close to impossible. The Twitter industry is overflowing with options, whether it is iPhone, BlackBerry, or Android Twitter apps that are available by the hundreds, or PC applications that compete heavily for the top spot, a Twitter user has a wide variety from which to choose.
Having said that, there are some of the leading names in the game, who clearly dominate the space in terms of users, and rightfully so. I am talking about apps like Tweetie (now Twitter for iPhone), Tweetdeck, and Seesmic. Putting aside the mobile apps for a second, I want to talk a little bit about Tweetdeck, which according to the most recent numbers, leads the way in PC users. I have used Tweetdeck exclusively from day one, and have occasionally peeked at the competition, namely Seesmic, only to return to Tweetdeck within hours. Now, don’t get me wrong, Seesmic is great, especially their iPhone app, and many well known Twitter personalities use Seesmic on their desktop, but I don’t know whether it was just habit, but I always preferred Tweetdeck.
Before I talk about Tweetdeck and its features, I want to mention one thing that really puts me over the edge when it comes to my Tweetdeck loyalty. The Tweetdeck team, specifically Richard Barley, as busy as they are, somehow always find the time to respond on Twitter, whether it is a thank you for a compliment, or answering technical questions, they are always available. In today’s day and age with the tools the internet provides combined with the increasing competition, every company should have a constant search in place for their brand and be prepared to open dialogue with their customers. Tweetdeck does it and they do it well.
As for the application itself, if I was to write a blog post every time there were some new features, that would be all I would ever write about. The Tweetdeck team seems to not need too much sleep, as they push out more updated versions than almost any other software company I have ever seen. However, the newest edition includes some features that deserve a special mention as they will fundamentally change the way people use Twitter.
The new Tweetdeck has many new features such as Foursquare and Google Buzz integration, flexible RT options, and a whole lot more. However, besides the addition of another column in Tweetdeck for Facebook or LinkedIn, all these recent additions are just that, nice additions. The newest version has two features, however, that have already changed the way I use Twitter, and they were only introduced three days ago.
- Scheduled Tweets: Scheduling tweets is a debatable topic. Many people have issues with any kind of automation when it comes to tweeting. That includes auto follows, auto DMs, and auto tweets. These concerns are very justified since Twitter is at its best when there is true dialogue, and not when you are just blasting your followers with tweets and not following up with conversation. In all the time I have been on Twitter, I have never automated anything. However, there is one problem with my technique, and that is that people who are not in my time zone will not be seeing those tweets. If I send out a tweet in the morning, people in other time zones are sleeping, and when they wake up and log in to Twitter, I will most likely be sleeping.
With the new Tweetdeck, I can schedule tweets, which will ensure that more people see my tweets. I tried this last night for the first time, and it worked like a charm, both in setting it up and in reaching a wider audience. Generally speaking, Tweetdeck is not considered to be a heavy business tool and businesses that use Twitter like to use tools like Hootsuite and others. However, with Tweetdeck’s search capabilities (brand monitoring), its phenomenal Twitter list integration (finding targeted audiences), and the new scheduling capabilities, Tweetdeck can most definitely compete with the best of the Twitter business tools out there.
I have not yet decided if I am going to be scheduling tweets every night, but it is important to emphasize that the first thing I do when logging in to Twitter in the morning, is respond to all the comments, replies, and RTs I got to my scheduled tweets. If you are going to schedule tweets, and thereby surpass the need for engagement and interaction, well that kind of defeats the purpose of Twitter and social media in general. - Global Filter: We are all familiar with Twitter search and the ability to find information or people who are tweeting about any topic, but with this new Tweetdeck filter, you can do the opposite as well. One of the down sides caused by the Web is the free flow of information even when that information is not wanted. The most common example of this is spoilers.Who has not experienced the annoying phenomenon of finding out the score of a sports game, the winner of a reality TV contest, or the conclusion of a TV series you wanted to watch yourself?
This week, with the conclusion of LOST, there were hundreds of people in my online network alone, warning against spoilers. Tweetdeck now allows you to add any words, users, or hashtags to a filter and any tweet including that term or from that user will be hidden from you. This is a very useful feature for people who do not want Blips, Foursquare/GoWalla checkins, or spoilers to show up in their Twitter stream.
This week, I had all words pertaining to the American Idol finale filtered out of my wife’s Twitter stream (OK, who am I kidding? I filtered it out on my own too.) for example. I am seriously considering adding some other words to the filter such as “Get followers”, “Social media expert”, and some other annoying things people say on Twitter.
In conclusion, I was already a huge Tweetdeck fan, but between the support for all my social networks, the ability to add multiple Twitter accounts, the new scheduling mechanism, and the global filter, I really do not need any other tool, Tweetdeck now does it all. This actually leaves me wondering, what could possibly be next? Wahtever it will be, I am sure it will be great.
What Twitter application do you use? Would these new features make you consider Tweetdeck as your primary Twitter tool? Please let us know in the comments.
Hey there,
Just wanted to say thanks for a great article. The whole team worked really hard on this release to make sure we produced something that would really step us up a gear, and we’re all thrilled to read posts like this that show that we succeeded.
We still have a nice long to-do list though, so look out for v0.35 coming soon, which will hopefully be just as exciting as this release.
Thanks again!
Richard Barley (@richardbarley)
TweetDeck Community Manager
Hi! I’m from Spain, i’ve been using tweetdeck for all over a week and i love it!….
do you know if they are planning to launch it for bb??…i would love to have it on mine…
thanks!!!
Thanks a lot Richard, looking forward to the next release, although, like I said, not sure what else you guys can do, but I trust it will be awesome.
Hi Nico, there are rumors about a BlackBerry version, but until that happens, check out Ubertwitter, it is a great BB app.
Hi there! I switched to Tweetdeck recently again after using Seesmic for desktop for a while. Also used Tweetdeck on iPhone. With the 2 new features you mention in your blog Tweetdeck is also my favourite again. Especially the Global Filter is great. I filter the 4sq, the gowal and the #ff tweets. It works brilliant.
Have to say that I switched to twitter for iPhone recently. With the list functionallity I don’t need the specific groups anymore that were so great in Tweetdeck for iPhone.
By the way, your article is very clever. Thanks!
One huge irritation remains in Tweetdeck, for me – and it’s always been the biggest problem.
It always insists on opening with the focus on the most recent tweet, and not the one that I last read.
This is why I don’t use it on mobile (I use Tweetie/Tw4iPhone). But I use PC on the desktop, and the lack of Tweetie for PC keeps me using Tweetdeck for PC. Switching between the two means I mostly stick to tweeting on the iPhone.
When will Tweetdeck finally support ‘open at last-viewed tweet?
I started off with Seesmic about a year ago, but really soon afterwards I switched to Tweetdeck on my Mac and never changed to any other Twitter client, though I tested quite a lot.
TweetDeck is the best. The other app I use for Twitter on my Nokia S60 phones is Gravity, another one that is the best app you can get.
@Andrew I don’t really see it as a problem. But that is because I don’t want to read all tweets if I have not been on twitter for a couple of hours.
But with the lists I can look at the most important tweeps that I follow. The rest I leave as it is.
So, for me it works oke.
I think Tweetdeck should create a setting where you can switch it on or off.
Work around the API LIMIT!Heavy Tweeters are forced OFF by API Limits.
1) I agree entirely with Andrew Denny about the desirability of an ‘open at last viewed tweet’ option. It doesn’t need to be the default, bt it does need to be there.
2) The most irritatingly absent feature, which can’t I think be all that hard to add (and more useful perhaps even than scheduled tweets) would be a column for RSS feeds, perhaps optionally picking up its list of feeds from Google Reader and others. It doesn’t need to be a full-featured RSS reader such asFeedDemon; just being able to have the feeds in a column alongside Twitter, Facebook &c would be very very convenient.
TweetDeck is first choice indeet. It mades me handling all my professional and private information lines via Twitter. There is no longer a need to have any other account at FB etc. ( http://bit.ly/ce7eaE Blogpost: bye fb – in German)
Cheers Jan
TweetDeck is awesome but the one things (besides going to first unread tweet like Andrew said) is syncing read/unread tweets across devices. Other Twitter apps already do this, but if I read something on the desktop, I don’t want to read it again on my iPhone, at least not by default.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TD put this in. It’s the one thing from making you the king of Twitter apps on all devices.
I’m with Andrew. I use Twitter primarily as an information stream. I only follow 100 sources, so when I jump on to Twitter, I want to read ALL of the tweets that I’ve received since I last logged on. I have found it easier to do this via the Twitter website. A “last read” feature for TweetDeck would be GREAT! BTW…how long does TD hold on to the tweets you receive…is there a limit to how far back in time I can view tweets in my inbox?
TweetDeck is my top pick both desktop and IPhone app. Occasionally, thinking I’ve missed something in Seesmic or Hootsuite, I’ll give them another try but I always quickly go back to TD.
Love the lists – they keep me organized and focused; following groups, industries and hashtag topics.
Just like others, would love to see syncing across various devices and of course, last tweet viewed.
Agree with Kim & the others…being organized & focused are important…Kudos for a great app. I do have one issue – TweetDeck Notifications doesn’t serve me at all…mostly interferes with my progress. Since I’m not as computer savvy as some of you…perhaps I just overlooked a way to turn this off ??
One thing that really bothered me about TD before I switched to echophone was the lack of Growl integration. I like to manage all of my notifications globally within the Growl pref pane. TweetDeck was the only app on my Mac that used it’s own notifications. I also dislike Adobe Air as a middleman junk process. I will be sticking to Echophone for a while
@Giles, I never thought of it – but boy, would the RSS column feature be sweet – so make that +1 🙂
(I currently use feedly, which is great but like so many things you have to ALSO open, it’s out of sight, out of mind too often..)
@Mike, I know from dialog with TD-staff a short while ago that getting control of those seen/unseen tweets is a priority which makes me hope seeing it any time soon. There are numerous reasons for this, one is your problem with keeping desktop and mobile experience sync’ed, another is that of marking a tweet as read in one coloumn and being bothered by reading it again in another even after hitting that Clear seen updates button!
But to sum it up: Great article and TD FTW! 😀
I too am a big fan of Tweetdeck, And I applaud the way they listen to their customers, and keep evolving.
I think this is the key to success in today’s world, and they are the masters of it.
As to your intriguing question, what’s next, here’s what I’m looking for:
1. more list management tools so list members can be sorted, and moved or deleted in bulk operations
2. the ability to see from a tweet the tweeter’s status as followed/following & as member of list(s)
3. being able to combine one or more lists or other groupings into a single column
4. being able to filter tweets in or out by list
5. Also I’m hoping tweetdeck adds support for additional social networking sites, such as friendfeed, statusnet, etc…. i.e. all the usual suspects which are supported by ping.fm
Great, insightful, useful – as always…
We are currently optimizing our twitter blog and twitter tool to be accesible to Iphones and other portable devices. So far we have it set up where anyone can access our software via web at tweetbuddy.net. If you cant access it through your portable device, please let us know so we can install a fix.
Happy twitter marketing!
I wish Tweetdeck and Tweetie (Twitter for iPhone now) would somehow merge (yeah I know…) – Tweetie has the smoothest usage (specifically on the iPhone), Tweetdeck has decks and sync options – combined they would make an awesome tool. right now I use Twitter for iPhone and Tweetie on the Mac – can’t see myself using Tweetdeck on the Mac and Twitter for iPhone together (a consistent user experience problem…).
Of course I congratulate both teams on awesome products. please get together guys 🙂
I’m brand new to Twitter – fought against for so long and yet in just over a week I love it. However, while I use Tweetdeck at work (I’m a journalist), I can’t load it on my home PC. I really, really love Tweetdeck and don’t want to even try anything else, though I may have to.
Not being technically-minded, I’m at my wits’ end. The problem seems to be with the latest Adobe Air-whatever, which refuses to load – and then I’m stuck.
If anyone has any useful ideas, I’d appreciate them.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for mentioning the filter feature. I didn’t even know about it and I’ve been using tweetdeck for a while. I can know pay attention to my home stream again, instead of just focusing on my lists. THANK YOU!!
I too loved Tweet Deck but had to switch to Hootsuite because 5 different platforms don’t show up on TweetDeck on my PC here in LA. Twitter for iphone, twitter for Blackberry, Ubertwitter, my French feed off an API and one more that escapes me now.
I contacted Mr. Barley and he was gracious enough to write me but he asked me to take screen shots of my Tweet Deck. I didn’t see the purpose if the rogue platforms didn’t show up there!!
So I switched to Hootsuite.