TweetDeck was recently updated to version 1.11 (news via iPhoneFreak), so I decided to give this free Twitter app another shot. I had shied away before because TweetDeck always seemed like one of the more hardcore Twitter apps out there. The iPhone version is really just a port of the Adobe Air desktop version which focuses on managing your Twitter life in columns.
It’s actually so powerful it strikes me more as a piece of machinery than an application. That’s not to say it isn’t a cool, tech-y UI, but I find the depth of the features a little intimidating and sometimes a little clumsy compared to other Twitter clients I’ve tried.
Would you like some buttons to go with your buttons?
Part of the reason this app strikes me as being similar to a machine is the number of buttons it has. There are a lot of buttons to press and columns to swipe. I’m not going to turn this into a deathmatch between TweetDeck and Tweetie 2, but I will say that I missed the natural ease-of-use of Tweetie. TweetDeck usually features several ways to do the same thing, but this just clutters up the UI instead of empowering it. One example of this is the “mark read” feature. You can mark tweets as read by tapping on the “Updates” button from anywhere in the app, or you can press the “Mark Seen” button when you’re within a particular column. The thing is, when you’re viewing a column you can see both these buttons at once and they take up two out of the five buttons along the bottom of the screen. What’s really strange, though, is the fact that you can’t mark a tweet as read by tapping on it and viewing it…you’ve got to use the aforementioned buttons or keep your tweets forever “unread”. This is a small oversight in the grand scheme of things, but it’s strange that such a powerful and ultra-customizable app would miss such a basic feature. Imagine having to mark each e-mail as read after viewing it!
Column-nundrum
Wow, that pun was a real stretch. I apologize.
Columns are where the real power of TweetDeck lie, and they’re great because of how flexible they are. You can reposition columns in two different ways: by holding down on one and then dragging them around å la the home screen or by just using the gear button on the top-right corner of each column. You can even get set the refresh time for each column separately, if you’d like. Just be careful not to go over the Twitter’s API-access limit or you might be locked out for a time (thanks to @anderson_f for this info).
Whether it’s Twitter trends, tweets in a 20 mile radius, or everything that Stephen Fry says, you can set columns to act as sentries to notify you of most anything sent from a bird-related client (well, except Thunderbird). The default columns are: timeline, mentions, and inbound direct messages.
Unfortunately, managing more than three or four columns starts to feel like a hassle to me after a while. TweetDeck probably shines more in a desktop environment where the columns have the screen space to stretch their legs, but swiping through and viewing just one column at a time just to get to the next feels clumsy and cramped. You can easily jump to other columns via the Update button, but only when there’s something new to see.
This column-based interface scales very nicely if you’re watching out for a lot of different things or follow a lot of people. You can even group certain people into columns so that you can essentially make your own local Twitter lists. However, if you’re like me and don’t follow trends or hundreds of people, then the TweetDeck might feel like 52-column pickup.
Viewing posts
Thankfully, viewing and replying to Facebook status updates and tweets is much easier than managing them. Instead of overloading you with buttons, this interface shows only text instead. I also like how you can see a twitpic right beside the message instead of having to click on a separate link. Replying is simple, fast, and supports landscape (although it’s button-activated, no accelerometer support).
I have only two issues with the viewing/replying portion of TweetDeck. The first is that I can’t seem to view @mentions when viewing a person’s profile. I could see all of @justiphoneblog’s recent tweets, but I couldn’t find a way to see his mentions from within his profile. It seems like I’d have to make a separate column just to see those, and that’s not a very good workaround.
The second issue is with the in-app browser: it works, but the two bars on the bottom take up a little more room than I’d like. The bottom bar stays exactly the same and another smaller bar with browser controls sits just above it. There’s no reason to have two bars stacked on each other when I could easily navigate away from the webview mode using the top bar.
Column-clusion (sigh, sorry again)
I haven’t covered everything in TweetDeck – just the features that I really use – but the app covers most bases: multimedia uploads, multiple account support, and cross-account posting (Facebook and Twitter simultaneously). I think TweetDeck has seen a pretty significant update to its UI and feature set since it came out earlier this year, and despite its $0.00 price it’s still a complete Twitter client. However, having found Tweetie 2 I find TweetDeck far too crowded to return to. The column layout tends to favour busier, multi-taskier Twitter users than myself. If Tweetie 2 is an elegant little bird’s nest, then TweetDeck is the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, and I just don’t need that many moving parts to talk about how I’m eating a chocolate bar.
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TweetDeck for iPhone is a free app on the App Store.
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TAGS: facebook, free app, Twitter
