Twitter is about to become a much more robust platform for doing, well, whatever it is we do on Twitter every day. I usually call it “micro-blogging," but it's really so much more than that. It's my random thought register, a place where whatever notion is flitting through my mind--no matter how brief or unusual--is often delivered to an audience of 17,000 followers.
Most of the people I follow--meaning those that I actually pay attention to--use it in much the same way. Yes, there are the feeds, which deliver hard news headlines, but the beauty of Twitter is what lies in between the news reports. In any case, I keep track of all things Twitter related with TweetDeck, a desktop Twitter management utility I've been using since 2008.
For those unfamiliar with the Adobe Air-based app, TweetDeck, let me explain. TweetDeck lets you customize your Twitter world in an organized, columnar view, with unfiltered Tweets from those you follow in the first column, Tweets that mention you in the second column, and Direct or private-line Tweets to you in the third. You can add columns based on keywords, specific Twitter members, other accounts, etc. It builds in a lot of the other third-party functions/apps you might use, such as photo uploading to Twitpic, the bit.ly URL shortener, and even Tweet translation services. There are a ton of other features, too: It's a remarkably rich app.
All in all, TweetDeck is my one-stop desktop source for all things Twitter. I almost never visit the Twitter site. Its single-column view is way too linear for me, and I don't like Twitter's form of ReTweets, which don't let me edit before posting.
Most of the people I follow--meaning those that I actually pay attention to--use it in much the same way. Yes, there are the feeds, which deliver hard news headlines, but the beauty of Twitter is what lies in between the news reports. In any case, I keep track of all things Twitter related with TweetDeck, a desktop Twitter management utility I've been using since 2008.
For those unfamiliar with the Adobe Air-based app, TweetDeck, let me explain. TweetDeck lets you customize your Twitter world in an organized, columnar view, with unfiltered Tweets from those you follow in the first column, Tweets that mention you in the second column, and Direct or private-line Tweets to you in the third. You can add columns based on keywords, specific Twitter members, other accounts, etc. It builds in a lot of the other third-party functions/apps you might use, such as photo uploading to Twitpic, the bit.ly URL shortener, and even Tweet translation services. There are a ton of other features, too: It's a remarkably rich app.
All in all, TweetDeck is my one-stop desktop source for all things Twitter. I almost never visit the Twitter site. Its single-column view is way too linear for me, and I don't like Twitter's form of ReTweets, which don't let me edit before posting.
