My Week With TweetDeck

When I first made a Twitter account back in 2010, TweetDeck was the only client that I knew of, had positive reviews and impressed me enough to consider using as a gateway to the network. Although I did have it installed on my machine I found the experience was lacking something – I cannot put my finger on what, it just wasn’t quite all there for me and therefore, I uninstalled it just a few weeks after installing it.

After recently hearing that it the company had been acquired by Twitter I was tempted to install it on my machine again and have a look to see what the redesign had done, but I was thinking of doing this client experiment that I am doing now, so I held off.

Upon the first opening of the app, it is clear that a lot has changed – all in all – it is far more integrated with the native twitter.com experience, which for me – a person very reliant on the website, up to now – was a very welcome feature. Despite this, there were some negatives to put against the positives, which have been listed below.

Pros:

• Fluent integration with Twitter in both functionality and looks, as you would expect.
• Columns, done in a much better way than MetroTwit – this led to me actually using the app in a four column layout of Feed; @mentions; direct messages and my personal tweets.
• Each column is independent, wherever your mouse is determines which column is active.
• It can also be connected with Facebook, which I chose not to do – but the option is there if you want it.
• Good layout to view a person’s profile
• It is fast. I remember the old TweetDeck being a tad on the slow side, now I have upgraded the RAM in my computer since I last used it – but I have noticed a decent performance jump.

Cons:

• Searching brings up a window over the top, I would prefer if it brought up another column.
• Not a great level of customization, I know that the old version was very adaptable – this never version is not so.
• Doesn’t allow a single column view – this is not such a huge deal as it was with MetroTwit, but it would be nice if the feature was there.
• Although the interface for viewing a profile is good, when you select to view the history of their tweets a browser window is opened, I would prefer the client to make another column with the tweets in it.

All in all I really do think that this is one of the best Twitter clients. Personally, I would like the feature of having a single column view to make it more attractive to people with small, single-display set ups but I can definitely recommend this client to people with multi display set ups.

To conclude I think that this client is best for people who maybe are not concerned about always monitoring what is happening in the world of Twitter, is perhaps less tech-savvy, and is looking for an experience consistent in layout, function and aesthetics to twitter.com without having to actually go to the site itself. However, if you are someone who always want easy – at a glance – access to Twitter, then so far from my test I can recommend DestroyTwitter for you – which still remains my preferred client of the ones I have tested. But, can Echofon change that? Check back this time next week to find out.

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