My Twitter and TweetDeck Experiences

I have been a little late to get on to the Twitter bandwagon. Primarily, because I thought it was quite a pointless addition when I do so many status updates with my Facebook account. But recently, I have been getting a little tired of Facebook and spend much lesser time on it that I used to.

However, I tried Twitter last month just for the heck of it, and I think I am already hooked. I enjoy receiving news and updates from other people, without feeling too much pressure to respond. Also, I like the fact that Twitter is a very simple and basic application that does not include too many additional bells and whistles.

Another great aspect: I can display Twitter updates within my WordPress blog. How cool is that ! Everything in one place, I love the idea! Now, WordPress guys, please add support for Shelfari too…this is a long-pending request from my side!

Using the Twitter web interface, I was able to add (follow is the Twitter terminology) existing friends and make new friends very quickly. So quickly in fact, that my Twitter web interface started getting very cluttered, and I was feeling bogged down again. Luckily, I came across a blog that mentioned TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a Twitter client that you install on your system, and it’s UI looks something like this:

What I am loving about TweetDeck:

• The TweetDeck screen has three columns, which neatly categorize all your Tweets into replies, direct messages, and general tweets. This ensures you don’t really miss anything that is addressed to you amongst all the general Tweets. In addition, there are options to group tweets into various categories, making everything much more organized ( I am very big on organized 🙂 ).

• I also like the fact that it is integrated with Facebook, so you can get Facebook status updates as well.
• Because TweetDeck is a client app, it works like GTalk. You can keep it minimized in your taskbar, and a little window will pop up and notify you if you have received any tweets. Verrry convenient!

What I am not loving about TweetDeck:

• The download takes an extremely long time. Before you download TweetDeck, you need to download something called AdobeAir. Not quite sure what that is, but I am not very happy with it, and I am concerned that it might turn out to be a very heavy application, which is the last thing I want right now!
• Looks like it could be very distracting, and I definitely would not like pop up updates all the time.

Anyway, this is an experiment, and I am looking forward to seeing how it goes, and whether I continue using TweetDeck to manage my tweets. Also, let’s see how long Twitter catches my fancy before the next big thing in social networking comes along.