Changing the tune of my tweets!

So back in April I wrote about my thoughts on Tweetdeck and Twhirl. In this post I was quite on the side of Twhirl and thought that Tweetdeck was too overblown for a microblogging client. See Micro Blogging with a Macro Client? Posted by Jason Epstein Thursday, April 30, 2009.

I am here to change to the tune of my tweets. Ladies and Gentlemen, I am changing my tune to that of Tweetdeck. While I will still concur that tweetdeck is a large client, with numerous features and uses a lot of resources, at this point I don't know what I would do without it!

When I wrote the original post, I was following just under 30 people and even fewer followed me. Now my PLN (personal learning network) has grown to the hundreds and I am gaining more and more each day. In order to filter, respond, take in, and meet a group of people that have become integral to my professional network, I need a client that will allow me to multitask through the hundreds of tweets every hour. Now, I am NOT saying that I read each and every post, but what I am afforded by the larger client is the ability to filter through them, see groups that are marked with hash tags (#), follow certain people that I would like to stay closer with, and see mentions and Direct Messages (DM) pulled out of the crazy traffic to a place where I can monitor them more closely.

Along with these features, I must say that I like the notification system. This system has a pop-up when new tweets come in, and tells you which column they are in as well. FYI, a column is what a breakout of a particular group of tweets is called in Tweetdeck.

There are more features than those that I have listed here, and more than I even use at this point. What I am getting at, is that for a small or finite amount of tweeting or less time spent tweeting, I would still recommend twhirl. However, if you are using Twitter as a primary method of connecting with your PLN and have a growing PLN base, I must change my former opinion and say that Tweetdeck does the trick and allows the user more control over the platform.

In addition to the desktop client that I use, I also use the Tweetdeck for iPhone as my mobile twitter client. I like this because it allows me to use the same application and have a similar look on both my computers and my mobile device.