Twitter is quickly becoming a hugely powerful tool for connecting on the social web. Songwriters and musicians around the world have embraced the twittersphere to connect with fans and spread their music. Today I’d like to offer a review of my official twitter weapon of choice: TweetDeck.
It’s one of the most feature-packed Twitter clients out there, and it’s geared towards the power-Twitter user. TweetDeck is the perfect solution for songwriters and bands who need to manage a very large Twitter following, while connecting with lots of new like-minded fans. TweetDeck is still considered to be in “beta”, but they just released the latest version, TweetDeck 0.25, which brings a handful of cool features on-top of all the gems it already had.
Multiple Twitter Streams with TweetDeck
While the overcrowded lot of Twitter clients out there stick to the traditional single stream of tweets - TweetDeck goes much farther. You can set up an unlimited amount of streams (columns), each filtered for a specific purpose. One could be for your favorite twitter followers, one could be for a search term, one could be for your facebook friends (yup, facebook is now integrated… more on this below), and one to view everyone.
Here’s a screen shot of my TweetDeck. As you can see, I keep about 4-5 columns open most of the day:
I know what you’re probably thinking: “Information overload! I thought twitter was supposed to be simple!” Let me make some sense of all this.
Twitter Groupies!
OK, not exactly. With TweetDeck, you could separate the people you follow on Twitter into groups. This is perfect for those who follow hundreds or thousands of people and want to be sure they’re keeping track of the ones they’re most interested in. For example, you might want to create a group for your real-world friends on Twitter, or a group for those who are based in the same region as you.
As of this writing, I’m currently following 871 people on Twitter. I created a group called “My Favs” which contains roughly 30 of my favorite people on Twitter. It’s a combination of some real-world friends, folks who I’ve been in frequent @reply conversations with, interesting people in my industries (music and web design), and people that regularly post hilarious or super-interesting tweets.
That’s not to say I’m ignoring the rest the 830 people I follow on Twitter. My next column contains my entire Twitter network.
“This One Goes to 11″ or Power Twitter Search
As I’ve written about previously in the article, Grow Your Band’s Following with Twitter, Twitter search is the key to expanding your reach on Twitter and creating meaningful relationships with those who matter to you - people who have share the same interests… Those who are most likely to follow you on Twitter, dig your music, and become a fan of your band.
In TweetDeck, you could create a column which feeds you tweets from across the twittersphere based on a search term. I like to keep one search column open at all times. This week, my search term is “composing music”. This allows me to find, follow, and connect with anyone who is tweeting about composing music - something I’m personally very interested in. Other search terms I often use are “Reason 4.0″, “Pro Tools”, “studio recording”, and of course “The Mets”.
Now with Facebook!
The latest version of TweetDeck nicely incorporates Facebook into the mix. You could create a column which contains all of your Facebook friends status updates. It also allows you to choose to send tweets to Twitter, Facebook, or both simultaneously. Pretty sweet.
I have found this feature has already rejouvenated my interest in Facebook and brought about connections with old friends.
The Rest…
Those are the things that truly set TweetDeck apart from your common Twitter app. As if that wasn’t enough, here’s a list of the other cool features they packed into this tweeting-beast:
- URL shortening with several shortening services (including the new digg.com shortening service)
- TwitPic integration
- Language translation of tweets
- Ability to “favorite” tweets
- Twitter tag cloud (they call it “TwitScoop”)
- Integration with 12seconds.tv for video tweets (haven’t checked this out yet. Sounds interesting)
- StockTwits integration (Lets face it. Musicians don’t care about the stock market)
- Super-easy follow, reply, re-tweet, direct message functionality
- Custom colors
What’s your TweetDeck Set up?
As you can see, TweetDeck is highly customizable with various groups, search, and columns options. If you’re a TweetDeck user, what’s your set up, and how do you use TweetDeck to enhance your musical / songwriting efforts?
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04/16/2009
7:44 am
Nightjar
Been using Tweetdeck for several days. Very nice. My set-up is much like yours, though I’m finding a lighter grey with dark print easier on the eyes. It seems to give me quicker recognition. Just wish I had a bigger screen for the Tweetdeck columns.(15″ MacBook Pro.) The horizontal scroll is a bit slow. I larger monitor may be in the offing.
Q: Do “direct messages” come through if you don’t have that column open?
04/16/2009
7:47 am
Sundi D. Hayes
This was super timely for me! I just started using TweetDeck yesterday. I hadn’t thought of using a column for ongoing search. A feature I’d like to see that isn’t there…adjustable font sizes. It shows it as an option on the settings but it doesn’t allow for a CHANGE in the size. Just a thought since it is still beta!
Create an amazing day!
04/16/2009
7:50 am
Brian Casel
I believe direct messages only come through if you open the direct messages column. I just keep it closed, and open it up whenever I receive a DM email notification.
True, horizontal scrolling is slow. I’d like to see more keyboard control rather than mousing to click all the small buttons around TweetDeck.
04/16/2009
7:51 am
James NomadRip
“You can set up an unlimited amount of streams (columns), each filtered for a specific purpose.”
You’ve never tried making it go to 11 columns have you?
04/16/2009
7:56 am
Nightjar
@Brian…Thanks. That’s one less column I need to keep open. I agree about the keyboard.
04/16/2009
8:20 am
steven
q : what is the limit of 100 API / hour … i’m not quite sure ..
04/16/2009
8:44 am
Brian Casel
@steven - found this article explaining about the API call limit:
http://tweetdeck.posterous.com/what-does-rate-limit-exceeded
@James - I’m currently on 4 columns. 11 would rock the socks off my mac.
04/16/2009
10:02 am
ChristaanH
I’ve been using tweetdeck for a couple of months now. To me the most important feature is the ease of search within the postings.
Following a select group of bloggers who’s blogs I read makes sure I know what they are reading and finding online…
Usually I have tweetdeck st up on a different screen so I can constantly monitor developments as I do my normal computer activities… I can’t imagine twitter without it anymore.