AppFlow

Let’s face it – Social networking sites are the number one distraction for computer users in the 21st century.  That bookmark for facebook is always sitting on your bookmark bar, and there’s always the temptation to tweet about how bored you are with working.  Like it or not – social networking sites are your workflow’s biggest enemy!

Of course – the obvious answer is to block these sites while you’re working.  There are programs out there that allow you to block your own access to ‘distracting sites’ for a period of time, but do you really want to?  Surely there is a perfectly good compromise.  That’s where Tweetdeck comes in.

At your fingertips

Tweetdeck uses an interface based on a series of columns.  Each column displays different information (e.g. your mentions feed from twitter).  Each column can be moved so that your tweetdeck looks exactly as you want it to.  If you use several computers, sign in to your tweetdeck account – and have all of your columns the same on your Mac, PC running Windows or Linux and iPhone.

Tailored to Twitter

Originally designed for twitter, Tweetdeck offers all of the tools you would expect from a standard desktop twitter client.  The column layout gives you at-a-glance updates as to what the people you’re following are up to.  This saves digging through pages and pages of twitter – as you can simply glance at tweetdeck.

As well as the standard options to reply to tweets, send the sender a direct message or retweet the message (yes, it supports new style retweets), Tweetdeck provides handy options for blocking users and reporting spam – right from this handy desktop app.

It also supports multiple twitter accounts, perfect for those secret agents among you who lead a double life!  Also quite good for bloggers updating their blog’s twitter feed.  Twitter lists are also supported.

For Facebook Freaks

This is all very good – but a lot of people don’t use twitter.  Well, fear not – this application can also give you access to all of your Facebook news feeds as well!  You can add any number of columns to your tweetdeck for Facebook, including the Full news feed, or drill down to have a column for status updates, wall posts or photos.

But tweetdeck doesn’t only allow you to update your Facebook status and see everyone else’s updates.  You have all the functionality that you would expect from regular Facebook.  Hover over a friends display picture for options to comment on their status, right there in tweetdeck, like their status or write on their wall.

Other Integration

In addition to Facebook and twitter, Tweetdeck provides integration fro MySpace and LinkedIn.  Though I don’t personally use either of these – I’m sure that they offer similar brilliant integration as the ones I have tested.  I also expect that the guys at tweetdeck HQ will be adding more with time.

Handy Features

Multitasking

Tweetdeck makes updating multiple accounts simultaneously simple.  The top bar displays all of your accounts registered with tweetdeck and you can simple toggle the ones you want it to update.  These can be any number of twitter accounts – as well as your Facebook, MySpace and/or LinkedIn account.

Links and Photos

As it was designed with twitter in mind, Tweetdeck automatically shortens any URLs that you place in the updates box.  It will also upload photos to tweetphoto.  To do this, simply drag the photo into the update box and select ‘upload’.

And for your Workflow?

Although it may not yet be a replacement for the social networking websites themselves, Tweetdeck certainly offers a good compromise in getting your information without wasting time and getting distracted on Facebook.

The notifications may distract you to start with – but the offer the ability to reply, retweet, like, comment etc – right from the pop-up notification.  This, again, reduces the time spent socialising and, in turn, increases the amount of time working.

The Downside

There are many small little niggles I have with tweetdeck.  Overall – I think it’s a brilliant application, but the lack of sideways scrolling is a real downside.  Even with a 4 way scrolling mouse, or scrolling trackpad, you have to actually click the scroll bar at the bottom and drag it left and right to see your other columns.

There is also much less support for Facebook (and I’d guess this is the same for MySpace and LinkedIn).  It is obvious when using this application that it was designed for twitter.  Since I started using it, I haven’t once signed into twitter web, but have signed into Facebook on many occasions.

To the Future

As someone who’s been using Tweetdeck for not a very long time, I’ve been very impressed with the frequency of significant updates.  This gives me confidence that all of the little wrinkles in this application will be ironed out in time.  This application has great potential and I look forward to the next update.

Tweetdeck runs on Adobe Air and is completely free.  The iPhone app is also completely free.