This article is part one of a four part series on Twitter tools. If you haven’t heard already Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service. Twitter allows its users to send and receive 140 character messages called “tweets” to other users who have signed up to receive them. It is estimated as of Feb 2009 that Twitter has roughly 6 million users and approximately 55 million monthly visitors. This would put Twitter as the third largest social network behind Facebook and MySpace.
With such a large user base there are many 3rd party applications that utilize the Twitter API (Application Programming Interface) to create “productivity” tools for the Twitter user.
The first Twitter tool that I find very useful is called TweetDeck which can be found at www.tweetdeck.com. The TweetDeck program takes twitter feeds and places them into a window with 3 columns, All Friends, Replies, and Direct Messages. At the top of the window are several button to assist you in using the TweetDeck program.
TweetDeck allows you to be able to keep track of the Twitter updates that you send and receive and also the updates of the people you are following. TweetDeck also lets you perform group searches, topic searches and even pull the history of a Twitter users Tweets. All of these searches results will be placed into a separate column in your TweetDeck window.
TweetDeck allows you to customize your experience through the settings button. You have the ability to change the color of the application, the size of the columns, text colors, play notification sounds, among other settings.
I have been using TweetDeck and have been very happy with the over all design and ease of use. I especially like the ability to keep up to date on all of my Twitter tweets in one screen.
Follow this series and read Part 2 of Twitter Tools Unleashed – TweetManager.
Phillip Howe is an online network marketer. Learn more about Phillip at http://WhoIsPhillipHowe.com or visit http://HisMlmLeadSystem.com to learn how to get prospects for your business contacting you!
Tags: tweetdeck, twitter, twitter tools