TweetDeck (Twitter, Facebook)

Summary

Twitter has become this year’s catchphrase while Facebook has become the symbol of an entire generation. With everyone from kids to grandparents joining in on the social networking craze, some people are worried about the growing lack of online anonymity.

The emergence of social networking and micro-blogging has split public opinion in two. Despite the public’s skepticism towards the emergence of Twitter and Facebook, there are over 500 million Facebook accounts. In a time when even my mother is using Facebook, it’s not longer possible to ignore the importance of these new forms of communication. Here at AndroidPIT we use Facebook and Twitter to connect with our readers and spread information to a wider audience. With around 5,400 Twitter followers we can reach out to wide range of readers every single day.

Times are really changing quickly. As the joke goes: “Jesus was a really meek and humble guy. He only had 12 followers” :)

TweetDeck is an app with which you can keep tabs on all your social media accounts. Find out what TweetDeck can do for you in our test.
 

Are social networks really good for us? Frankly I’m not too sure. There’s a barely a single person in Germany or in the entire world that doesn’t go to Facebook at least on a weekly basis.

As I mentioned in the intro, we at AndroidPIT are using Twitter and Facebook to inform people not only about new content on the site, but also share the latest Android trends with readers worldwide. When we are on-the-go at press conferences and meetings, we always want to keep connected with our social networks on our smart phones. There are a slew of different apps available to do this, but they differ significantly. Usually, every social network requires its own specific app.

TweetDeck is different. This app lets you connect to your most important social networks using one program:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Buzz
• Foursquare

Extra awesomeness points: TweetDeck lets you access multiple Twitter accounts!

General functions
 

In brief: With TweetDeck you can access all of the most important features of both Twitter and Facebook. I’m not positive about Buzz and Foursquare because I don’t have an account with them.

You can communicate on the two social networking sites using the same user interface. You can send a single post to multiple social networks without having to open multiple pages or apps. For every post you can select on which social networking accounts you would like to have this information shared.

In addition, you can add other information to every post:

• Add a picture: add a photo from your gallery or directly from your camera.
• Add location: add a link with your geo-location to your post.
• Add contact: this lets you mention your twitter contacts in your post (i.e. @androidpit).

Using the favorites feature, you can add Twitter and Facebook contacts to a single page, giving you quick access to your most important friends and followers.

The Google Maps feature is most useful for using with Foursquare. It lets you pinpoint your exact location and share it with others.

The TweetDeck Feed includes all posts and messages from all your networks. You can view this as one single combined feed or smaller individual ones.

Individual Social Networking Functions

Twitter

In addition to the standard tweeting function, Tweetdeck offers you everything you’ll ever need to tweet and some more.
You can do the following with tweets:

• Reply: Standard feature for responding to tweets.
• Retweet: Self-explanatory
• Favorite: Save a tweet to your favorites list
• Share: A popup window comes up telling you all the ways you can share your tweet
• Translate: This is awesome! With one click you can instantly translate any tweet. Multiple languages are supported (Google Translate is probably being used here)
• Copy: Place your tweet on your copy clipboard
• Copy URL: Same thing but with a URL

With your contacts you have the following options:

• Follow/Unfollow
• Reply
• Direct Message

A variety of statistics are available for you to view:

• Tweets: Shows you how many tweets your contact writes per day on average
• Follower: Shows how many followers this contact has
• Following: Shows how many contact are being followed by a contact
• Favorites: Displays all the favorite tweets
• Mentions: Shows you all the tweets that mention a contact

Facebook

With TweetDeck you can also use all of the most crucial functions needed for posting notifications on Facebook. In Facebook I can:

• Comment: Adds a regular comment below a Facebook status
• Like: Easily place a like next to a notification
• Share: Same as with Twitter
• Translate: Same deal!

Clicking on a Facebook contact lets you:

• View the contact’s wall
• Post a comment to their wall

Bottom Line:

Forget about Yahoo and Vista because times are changing and they are changing fast. Maybe Facebook will only be a shadow of its former self in ten years, but it is clear the social networking has come to stay. With our lives becoming more mobile than ever, social networks are filling the communication gap.

Tweetdeck blew me away quite frankly. With just one app you can manage all of your social networks without losing any of the functions. Instead of cramming all feature into a single app, the TweetDeck team really thought about how to make this app both simple and accessible. I’ve been using this app for the entire day and I don’t see myself going back to my other Facebook and Twitter apps. Tweetdeck is quite simply a symbol of simplicity and efficiency. Thank you TweetDeck for saving me so much precious time! Five stars – and no buts about it!
 

For those of you that think that in order to have a lot of functions you have to sacrifice simplicity: TweetDeck could teach you a valuable lesson. The app shines with its clean and efficient design. The user interface is amazing and one of a kind. I really like the fact that the design isn’t simply a rip-off of the iPhone, but rather an independent Android design.

In summary, the app has an awesome UI that sets the bar really high for future Android apps.

TweetDeck is fast and doesn't lag. I did experience a series of crashes once, but they never happened again afterwards.

TweetDeck can be downloaded for free from the AndroidPIT App Center. No ads!