TweetDeck: Column Based Twitter Tracking

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application which allows for easy monitoring, managing and integrated posting on Twitter and other like-minded social networking tools like Facebook. You can login to it on their website if you have an account or can download the product directly onto your PC, Mac or Linux based machine – as well on as the iPhone and iPad. TweetDeck can run on the background of your computer but must be the main application running on your smaller i-devices (which isn’t surprising since these devices aren’t quite multi-tasking friendly yet!) The basic layout is that of columns – when you launch it for the first time, it automatically has one for your friends’ timeline, one for your mentions and one for your direct messages. Beyond that you can add any other column you like – a particular search for a word or hashtag, a group of friends that you want to lump together, even your Facebook friends’ status updates. A little yellow icon appears in your bottom menu bar and every time there is an update to one of your columns a notification window pops up in the upper right hand corner of your screen telling you which column an update was made to.

And for this reason, TweetDeck is an excellent tool for tracking up to the minute news, particular conversations, your competitors, trending topics for the day or any hashtag you like. You can add multiple twitter accounts and tweet from all of them at the same time or each individually, particularly useful for an organization with multiple handles to keep track of. It also allows for Facebook integration so you can not only update directly to Facebook but can display your Facebook friends’ status updates in a separate column. Posting a tweet with TweetDeck is a snap – it has automatic link shortening, translation services with over twenty languages, photo uploading and recent hashtag references.

As an example, I would recommend TweetDeck to an organization or individual that wants to know what is going on in the Twitterverse across a bunch of different topics or industries. For instance, if you are a mobile phone maker you could track your competitors, any hashtags such as #mobile #smartphone or even a conference such as “Mobile World Congress” or #MWC.

A few other things you should know about TweetDeck: they have a directory for easy following of people who are considered experts in any field you could imagine, they have an active support forum and their ten employees (blog here) are based out of London, a city very close to my heart.

Pros:

• Great interface
• Easy tracking of the information and friends you are most interested in
• Simple to post a bunch of different types of content

Cons:

• There are differences in the Mac and PC version that make it hard to explain across both platforms
• The feature set can be overwhelming for a new user
• A few of our team members (myself included) had issues with Facebook integration – I still can’t get my Facebook status updates added to a column via the “add account” function

To learn more about TweetDeck or download it for yourself – go to http://www.tweetdeck.com/