TweetDeck goes mobile and makes for the clouds

By
Tuesday, 16 June 2009

When I started developing TweetDeck, almost a year ago, I was trying to solve a very specific problem. Twitter provided an amazing new source of information but was already becoming unwieldy. When I missed a tweet from one of my real world friends I realised there was no way to weight the importance of people I followed or easily digest the avalanche of information. Thinking about this I realized that this was an increasing problem across the entire Web – not just with Twitter. More and more, sites are serving consumers streams of information rather than static web pages. And today’s browsers aren’t set up to help us filter and digest this new format. So I started TweetDeck with a focus on Twitter but a bigger vision, to become a new browser for the real-time Web.

Today, we’re taking a step closer to that goal. From our humble beginnings just one year ago, we’ve had such an overwhelming response from you, our users.  Your support and ideas have helped get TweetDeck to where we are today – building a team in London, constantly improving the product, and trying to change the way people view streamed, real time data from the Web. And now, we are happy to announce big improvements to TweetDeck, both on and off the desktop.

First, we are announcing TweetDeck for the iPhone, which means that you can now take all your TweetDeck favourites, including columns, groups and saved searches, everywhere you go. Browse through columns with the flick of a fingertip, see what’s new as it arrives with notifications and simply shake your iPhone to refresh. And we’re giving you all of this goodness for free. TweetDeck for iPhone is now available to download free on the Apple App Store.

Second, we’re releasing a new version of TweetDeck for the desktop, with lots of new features that have been in high demand and things like sync that make the iPhone app possible. Here are the highlights: 

Sync – you can automatically synchronise TweetDeck between your desktop and iPhone, making it really simple to import your columns and groups so you can be up and running on iPhone in a matter of minutes – no reinventing the wheel. Sync works in the background so whenever you change a group or add a new search column it’s updated and available on all your computers and your iPhone. This also means that everything can be backed up in case your computer ever crashes.

Multiple account support – you can now have multiple accounts with no need to switch between them. Whether you’re on the desktop or iPhone we’ve made it simple to see all your columns, for all your accounts and tweet from any account or even cross-post tweets to numerous Twitter accounts at the same time. 

Unlimited columns – you’ll be happy to hear that you can now have as many columns as you’d like on TweetDeck. No more 10 columns limit, now the sky’s the limit.

Local trends – rather than only being able to see what’s trending on Twitter as a whole, with local trends, you can now see what’s hot among your own friends and colleagues. You’ll be able to run local trends on any of your columns in TweetDeck.

Here’s a quick list of everything else that you can expect to see in the new desktop version:

  • Conversation window - View an entire dialogue all at once.
  • Video playback - Watch Qik or 12seconds video clips from the comfort of TweetDeck. 
  • New ‘Block & Report Spam’ button - Just one click will delete the message from view, block the user and report them to Twitter.
  • TweetDeck Recommends column - Find new and interesting people to follow whether you’re a Twitter newbie or a veteran of the Twitterverse. 
  • ‘Reply All’ - Tweet everyone mentioned in a tweet in just a couple of clicks.
  • YFrog - Share and preview YFrog photos inside TweetDeck. 
  • Smart filter – Start typing a username to find a person and add them to a group quickly and easily. 
  • RE (In reference to) tweets – Easily comment on a discussion. 

Look out for some more in-depth blog posts on each of the key new features in the next few days on our blog and Twitter account. For now download it for yourself and try it out and download the new iPhone version from the Apple App Store. Please let us know what you think at [email protected]. And if you love TweetDeck please help us to spread the word about TweetDeck by tweeting and telling your friends about us. Thanks!!

Iain & The Team at TweetDeck