TweetDeck, The Story of a Maligned App

In today's technology and communication heavy world, it is important to have a presence in a wide range of social networks, from Facebook to Twitter to Tumblr to FourSquare and so on. If you want to submit a single message across all of these different networks (or even across multiple accounts on the same network) it is nice to only have to do it once. That is were a social media manager or dashboard can come in handy. There are several applications out there that can do that for you, but I want to talk about one in particular: TweetDeck.

As part of my job I have to manage the company's social network presence. I tried several apps, web-based and Windows-based. I tried HootSuite, Seesmic and others, but my favorite was TweetDeck. To put it simply TweetDeck had everything I wanted. It had among other features:

• the ability to look at multiple accounts across multiple networks
• use Bit.ly to shorten links
• a neat feature called Deck.ly that allowed users to post messages longer than 140 characters to Twitter

TweetDeck had a web version, an Adobe AIR version (which would run on PC, Mac or Linux) and a iOS version. All in all, I was very happy with it.

And then, Twitter bought it...

At first, I had great hopes for the purchase by Twitter. I expected great new feature to be added. I was wrong.

Shortly after purchase, Twitter released a new version of TweetDeck that was no longer written for Adobe AIR, but was now OS specific.(I imagine that this makes it harder to write.) This new version looked much plainer. This new version dropped support for LinkedIn, Google Buzz, Foursquare and MySpace and killed the Deck.ly feature.

I have the uneasy feeling that eventually, TweetDeck is going to be renamed the Twitter Manager (or something else with Twitter in the title). It's already been changed to TweetDeck by Twitter.

Even the logo has been changed to look more like Twitter.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm very unhappy that Twitter bought a program I like and messed it up. I wished they would have kept the features and improved them. But I get the feeling that Twitter is trying to boost their own product line to the detriment of some customers.

In the end, I still use TweetDeck, albeit, the pre-acquisition Adobe AIR version. The only thing that does not work is Deck.ly, so I'll need to find something else for that.

On another topic (but one very similar), Twitter has recently purchased another product that I use: the blogging platform Posterous. Twitter says they are not going to do anything to Posterous at the moment, but rumors are flying that they just bought Posterous for the talent. Lifehacker even had a article on how to switch your blog from Posterous. We'll see what happens next.

Digsby pulls ahead

As people spend more time on the web, they acquire new friends. The problem is that those friends are not connected by a single network. There are those who have MSN accounts, others use Yahoo, maybe some are limited to ICQ or Facebook. As a general rule, in order to communicate, you need to be part of each different system. At least, that used to be the case.

Recently, there have been some moves to unite the systems. Yahoo and MSN users can talk to each others. There have also been several attempts to write an open source program to connect. I have tried several of those programs and best one that I have seen so far is Digsby.

Digsby is a multiprotocol instant messaging application. It can connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook Chat Accounts. Manage multiple conversations with tabbed conversation windows. You can drag tabs out into their own windows for important conversations. Rename contacts with an alias so you don't have to remember buddy names like 'giantsfan123'.

Digsby also helps with your email accounts. You can manage your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts right from digsby. You can get popup notifications when new email arrives. It will also show a list of recently received emails.

The main problems that I have with Digsby is that it loads an icon into the system tray for every system that you are connected to beside the Digsby icon. Another thing is that Digsby is still in beta, but they are publishing quite often.

If you have friends on many different systems, try Digsby. It has the widest amount of compatabillity and works the best of its competiors.

Download here...

Facebook tops MySpace

Down through history there have been many rivalries, especially during recent years in the tech world. For example Tesla vs Edison, Ford vs GM, Jedi vs Sith, Windows vs Linux, Windows vs Mac, and Microsoft vs Google.

In the ream of social networking, the biggest rivalry has been between MySpace and Facebook. From the beginning MySpace has been in the lead, but recently Facebook took the lead as the graph above shows.

To give you some background, MySpace was founded in 2003 and Facebook went live in 2004.

MySpace has many features that make it a hit with the young generation. First of all, it is a place for those who create music to meet those who enjoy music. Another nice feature is MySpaceTV, which allows people to publish their videos much like YouTube.

One of the BIGGEST problems with MySpace is the volume of friend requests that you recieve. I have not had a MySpace account in several months for that very reason. I got tons of friend requests everyday from accounts that end up getting deleted because they were "spam accounts". I call them "spam accounts" because they are fake accounts created so that the owners can say they have a large number of friends.

Now I like Facebook better because I think it have a better look. To me Facebook have a higher, more mature class of people. (If you have a MySpace account, I'm sorry if I offend you, but this is my opinion.)

The biggest problem with Facebook is the number of application you can waste your time . I should know, I've waste enought time playing them myself.

For me Facebook is the better site, hands down, and people seem to be agreeing with me.