TweetDeck for Twitter and Facebook Management: Review

Social networking has grown by leaps and bounds since the early days of MySpace and the college-student only days of Facebook. It has ceased to be a medium by which users comment silly blurbs on their profiles and the profiles of friends or a place to upload and share pictures. With the advent of Twitter and its growth, social networking sites have become a place for sharing ideas, links, and videos. They have become tools of grassroots campaigns and music artists for getting the word out.

Facebook and Twitter have together become strong forces for what I and others dub "micro-blogging." It is an alternative (or perhaps a successor) to the blogging craze except snippets and links are shared rather than entire weblog articles. The "micro" aspect is further driven home by Twitter's 140 character limit for a single post. Facebook's status feature has done the same by growing beyond the usual, boring "I am doing thus-and-so at this very moment" updates to more engaging ones that express ideas about life, politics, religion, etc. These two platforms have become so integrated that now users can link their Facebook and Twitter accounts so that when he posts a new update to Twitter, it is also automatically posted to his Facebook status thus reaching a larger group of friends and online acquaintances (on Facebook they are called "Friends;" on Twitter they are called "Followers").

Now the geniuses behind TweetDeck have released an application that joins these two worlds to create a single user experience. TweetDeck, which takes its name from the word given to Twitter updates, is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and even iPhone users. It is a slick one pane app that allows users to update and view their Twitter and Facebook feeds in a single glance.

The Basics

Upon installation TweetDeck requires simply that you enter your Twitter and Facebook usernames and passwords so that it might access the two. Immediately the latest from those two feeds are pulled up in the TweetDeck interface. Twitter information is listed first in the far left pane. Here you can view all the latest Tweets from your followers. You can also respond to them and re-tweet them in this pain. In order to do so, move your cursor over the person's avatar picture. You will see four buttons appear. From these select the action you wish to initiate and immediately you will be given a text box in which to type your response or post your re-tweet.

To the right of this first pane you will see all of your @replies listed and grouped together. Next is a pane that is reserved exclusively for your Direct Messages via Twitter. Here you can read and respond to them right inside TweetDeck. The final panes are reserved for status updates and the news feed from Facebook.

Other Useful Features

In order to post a new Twitter update, use the field at the top of the window labeled "What Are You Doing?". Type your message and then press the Enter (or Return) key. If you would like the same message to be posted to your Facebook status, select the Facebook button above the text field. You will know that it has been engaged when it turns from gray text to white. By the same token, if you would like your message to ONLY be posted to Facebook, you can de-select the Twitter button so that only Facebook is selected.

Also there is a built-in tool that can help you stay within Twitter's 140 character limit. After typing your message, before pressing Enter, click the tweet shrinking button located to the right of the text field. Immediately your message will be shortened by removing unnecessary words and changing words such as "to" to "2" in order to save space. Don't worry, you can still edit it further before you finally submit it.

Two more handy features is integrated TwitPic and Bit.ly. With TwitPic you can share photos via Twitter within TweetDeck. Just press the TwitPic button and upload the photo you wish to share and you're done! Just add any additional comments with the text field and hit Enter. Likewise, if you want to share a link within your tweet, enter it into the URL field below the "What Are You Doing?" field and press the "Shorten URL" button. TweetDeck with then convert the URL to a Bit.ly mini-URL.

Side note: When you install TweetDeck, it will also install Adobe AIR which is the vehicle used by TweetDeck to push out updates to the software. So do not be alarmed by that.

Overall Impression

Tweetdeck has been a great tool to use for managing Facebook and Twitter. Being able to simultaneously post to both of these social networking platforms and read all of my updates from both is handy to have in one application. It keeps me from having to travel all over the web to get what I need and stay in touch with my Friends and Followers. However TweetDeck would be more useful if it would add more Facebook-centric features, such as photo uploading and wall commenting. Most of TweetDeck's great features only apply to Twitter. However TweetDeck is only in Beta so I am sure the best is yet to come.

I hope this tutorial and review has been useful to you. Good luck!