I have a love/hate relationship with TweetDeck. While TweetDeck is a great tool that does so many things so well (the Love), it doesn’t do everything I want and need it to do and it still suffers from some pretty annoying technical issues (the Hate).
To be sure, some of those issues involve Twitter itself earning Team TweetDeck kudos for dealing with the limitations of the Twitter platform. After all, it isn’t easy coming up with the next earth-shattering, must have, whiz-bang feature when the platform you’re dependent upon not always reliable. It’s also no small challenge when your primary competitor, Seesmic, is aggressively introducing new features (listen to Seesmic Founder Loic Le Meur give me Exclusive Seesmic News during my podcast interview last week on Addicted to Social Media).
And yet, there’s still so much more I want to get out of TweetDeck. What follows is my TweetDeck Wish List. While some of these features may indeed be on TweetDeck’s product road map, I’m hoping Iain and the team might see the light and implement at least a few of the others.
My TweetDeck Wish List
1. Collapse Columns Instead of Closing
Problem: I’m currently running twenty-two (22!) columns for a variety of clients and purposes. However, while TweetDeck is more stable than it used to be, it still uses a lot of system resources and slows down my computer. Also, having so many columns is inefficient and distracting. The only way to reduce the number of columns I have to close them. Not a good solution.
Too Many Columns? Hell, yes! (Actual screen shot)
Solution: Allow users to collapse, or minimize columns without closing them, like they can do with applications.
2. Grouping Columns
Problem: I manage the Twitter accounts for several clients and need to monitor a lot of different activity for each one. Consequently, I need to have many columns open at any given time. For example, I need to see all of the tweets I’ve sent, @ Replies, DMs and New Followers. I also have multiple active searches for things like specific tweeters relevant to the client and keyword searches. As mentioned above, this is inefficient and distracting.
Solution: The ability to group columns into a single Macro-Group, then being able to open, close or minimize that group, would be a tremendous efficiency booster.
Grouped and Labeled Tabs
3. Add Labels and Icons to Buttons in the Column Navigator
Problem: The introduction of the Column Navigator was a huge usability improvement. However, it just wasn’t implemented effectively for two reasons:
1. The buttons are too small and I’m constantly clicking on the wrong ones.
2. The popup that identifies the buttons is slow and inefficient.
Solution: The buttons need to have labels and icons for quick identification. There is more than enough room in the Column Navigator space to allow for much larger buttons. However, I would prefer TweetDeck switch to a Tab metaphor like web browsers now use and like Excel has been using practically since its introduction. Tabs allow, at a glance, for users to know where they are and to find what they need quickly, easily and painlessly. Then, if they want to see additional statistics for each column, moving their curser over a Tab to display a popup would be acceptable.
4. Drag and Drop reordering of columns
Problem: I’m constantly moving columns into new positions. Unfortunately, clicking the tiny “Move column” buttons on the bottom of each column only allows me to move a single column by one column position at a time. It’s also agonizingly slow.
Dragging Columns
Solution: Dragging and Dropping has been a user feature in applications for years. Even many websites offer that capability. Dragging and Dropping is simple and quick way to move columns into new positions.
5. Resize Column Width
Problem: All of my columns are the same size and they don’t need to be. Sometimes just a sliver large enough to see someone’s avatar is enough to show me that there are new tweets from them. Meanwhile, I would love to widen other columns to make it easier to see more tweets.
Solution: Let users customize the width of each column.
6. Change Font Size in Columns
Problem: It should be obvious from the suggestions above that column space is at a premium in TweetDeck and that some columns are just more important than others. Users need another tool to help them find the tweets or tweeters they’re looking for.
Solution: Allow users to change the font size of tweets in a specific column, or from specific tweeters. This would allow users to increase the number of tweets in a column (if font size is reduced) or allow tweets from specific tweeters standout (if font size is enlarged), thus improving efficiency.
7. Stack Columns
Problem: Some of my columns don’t get a lot of traffic, or I simply don’t need to monitor them as closely. In order to save screen space it would be great to be able to stack two or three columns into a single column.
Solution: Let users drag multiple columns and stack them into a single column.
8. Threaded Conversations
Problem: It is next to impossible to follow conversations in TweetDeck. Unless tweets are directly adjacent to one another, I don’t know who said what when. I often find myself opening Tweetie or Echofon on my iPhone to dig into conversations.
Solution: Add a button to indicate that there is a conversation and that could then be used to expand a tweet to make that entire conversation visible.
9. Icons to Identify if Someone is Following me Back.
Problem: It’s great that TweetDeck shows the number of followers a user has below their avatar, but I often have no idea if they’re following me back.
Solution: An icon as simple as a dot next to the follower count would let me know if the tweeter is following me.
10. Who’s Online Now Column
Problem: Because of the large number of people I follow, unless someone is actively tweeting, I often don’t know if they are actually online. What’s more, due to the proliferation of tweet scheduling tools, someone may not even be online even if I do see their tweets.
Solution: A column showing a list of everyone who is actually online. Note that an icon next their avatar within a tweet won’t work because of the aforementioned problems finding tweets. I could do a search, but again, I don’t want to open unnecessary columns and that would not show me everyone at once.
There, that’s ten. Since a friend of mind constantly complains that my posts are too long, I’ll stop here. However, if you would like to read about nine more features I’d like to see in TweetDeck, check out my blog.
In the meantime, I’d love to what features you want to see in TweetDeck. Let me know in the comments.
@Bart_M
Great summary. I would like to add one extra functionality:
Drag and drop users between lists.
I hope Tweetdeck is listening.
@SimpInvCards
Amen to all those! I especially favor the threaded conversations and resizable/stackable column ideas. I’m just starting out on Tweetdeck, but I’d like to be able to RT from multiple accounts as I manage more than just my own personal account.
@zagilas
Good points!
I’d like also to add one more thing to the list… TweedDeck is great program but it consumes a lot of RAM. Sometimes it uses more than 150Mb. I’d like it a bit lighter but I don’t know if that’s possible or if it’s something that we can expect in the future.
Great post Neal, thanks for sharing.
@mtio
Love number 8. Is there anything out there right now that will show a threaded conversation?
I have tweetie 2 on my iphone, but haven’t noticed that feature…
@aribadler
Good post! I agree with your list of 10 — especially, anything to streamline Tweetdeck would be great because it can be such a resource hog.
Also, I wonder if they’re going to get us a column for Google Buzz?
Finally, what about a way to stack columns, so maybe I see fewer entries for each column, but then I could at least see the latest stuff for more columns on one screen.
@kangastu42
I have an illness which effects my memory, and so do a lot of my friends. We would like something that helps us follow the threads too. I twould like the line under each tweet that has the tweeter’s ID and the + to include a link symbol that if you click on it, takes you straight to the tweet that the person clicked on and is responding to. you would be able to follow the threads back with it.
eg
kangastu42, [+] []
You could go back and forwards. Maybe it could open in a small window.
@richardbarley
Great post Neal. If only we had 10 more developers on the team, we could do it all for you
We are very aware of the need for constant improvement here at TweetDeck. We realise that there is a lot of competition out in the market and we know we need to stay on our toes to maintain our position as the number one desktop client.
So we are already on the case with some of your requests, and others are certainly things we are considering for the future. Here’s a quick rundown:
1 & 2 – Column management is big on the agenda for us. As we move to integrate more services, bringing more column types, we know we need to find a better way of handling this. We have some ideas about how best to do this and we hope that you’ll like them when they come to fruition later in the year.
3 – The column navigator was a totally new addition in v0.33 and something that we were very keen to get feedback on before expanding on it. Expect to see lots of improvements in this function soon based on the feedback we have received.
4 – We’re looking into drag and drop as a means for rearranging columns, like we have on the iPhone app
5 & 6 – Both of these should be included in a major release very soon.
7 – An interesting idea, possibly something for the future
8 – We have had the Conversation View for many months. Where Twitter has an “in reply to” link stored for a tweet, that link is visible in TweetDeck and you can click it to open the conversation view where you can see the tweet that was replied to plus any other recent tweets between the two of you. There are still improvements to be made, and higher API limits will help here.
9. To show this information for all tweets would be quite a stra
@richardbarley
[argh, cat jumped on the keyboard and submitted my comment too early! Continues...]
9. To show this information for all tweets would be quite a strain on resources, but we plan to make a lot more information visible when looking at an individual tweet, so look out for that.
10. Not sure how you would define someone as being “online”? Having TweetDeck open? having tweeted in the last x minutes?
We’re a small team, so exciting new developments cant happen overnight, but I think you’ll find the next few months will see the TweetDeck platform going from strength to strength.
Cheers
Richard Barley
TweetDeck Community Manager
@BetterflyDance
I now use HootSuite regularly instead of TweetDeck. Granted, I have much less Twitter activity to monitor than you do, but I’ve found that it’s tweet scheduling function and it’s threaded conversations help to make up for the fact that it’s a browser-based application. If TweetDeck added those capabilities (and used less memory), it would be much, much easier to use.
@talagy
Schedule tweets!! I love Tweetdeck for lots of reasons, but have to flip to Hootsuite when I want to schedule some tweets. If Tweetdeck had this feature I’d never leave.
@billbolmeier
22 Columns!! Yikes. I like #2 – The Macro-Group. That would help. Great points though. I like some features of TweetDeck and some of Seesmic but one doesn’t have everything. Some day.
@mixero
I supposed Mixero covers 7 of 10 features in your list
@nealwiser
Hi Richard, Thanks for your thoughtful comments, and for being such a responsive Community Manager (that’s the way to do it!).
It’s really great to know that the TweetDeck team is already working on many of the features I mention in my post. I’m sure you know it was written out of love for the platform and respect for the great job the team is doing. I am aware that the team is small, but that just serves to demonstrate how good the team is in that you continue to produce such a high quality product.
Thanks for everything, and if you missed it, there are “9 More Features I Want to See in TweetDeck” over at my blog. You can read it here, http://bit.ly/d9BfTS.
@TwtrCoach
Nice article Neil!
Holy smokes 22 columns!!!
TweetDeck is my fav Tweet Client. I support your suggestions. Some of the things I mention before for them is a bookmark/color code function. And of course also to update TweetDeck for iPhone.
Also would liked to have an RSS options for TweetDeck.
Cheers… Are
@problogger
I’d love to be able schedule tweets from within TweetDeck – it bugs me that if I want to advance tweet I have to sign into a service that allows it and then come back to TweetDeck – being able to sync with these services to do it from within TD would be GOLD!
@ShaneHudson
What a great list of features! When I first saw the link from Darren Rowse I thought “Tweet Deck already has loads of features” but now I have read it… I agree with them all!
@skrythe
HootSuite has most of these features already.
I have 20 columns, plus 7 other columns for my Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace feeds (updates + pending) and a Ping.fm column. These are all spread across 7 tabs.
Add multiple accounts, and the ability to schedule not only tweets, but status updates to all other services, and conversation threading, and I have to say that it’s a pretty sweet setup!
It’s web-based, so your configuration is portable. Plus, the iPhone app is the best mobile Twitter client I’ve used!
@2009Taxes
I tried TweetDeek once and thought, this is really crappy. Then I went back to HootSuite.
@loneplacebo
Great ideas here. I hope the team at Tweetdeck sees this. I really like the idea about who’s online.
@dtnorth
Awesome list and it compiles many of the features I’d also like to see – especially the grouping of columns. I also have multiple accounts, and that would be an awesome feature. One other feature I’d like to see is a bit of a two-part feature: Part 1 – redirecting columns into a single column and Part 2 – column source. For example, I’d like to redirect my direct-tells from all of my accounts into a single column. To keep things straight, it would have a little tag at the bottom as to where it came from (D @dtnorth, D @shutter_photo – and so on). One column saved – especially since these are low-use columns.
Until I had read your post…I would’ve wanted an additional feature to keep things clean, but I think your collapsible column solution solves that – I don’t want to get rid of my direct tell columns, I”d just like to place them all in one…and then collapse the individual D columns.
@atulkarmarkar
Scheduling tweets, a neater way to manage columns and above all, a way to exclude tweets with certain hashtags from appearing on my timeline. These will do quite nicely for now.
I did get a reply to the excluding tweets bit saying they’re working on it. Can get quite irritating to have my timeline flooded when people I follow decide to live tweet an event or a TV show, especially one I’m not that interested in.
@rososusilo
I have not explore the whole TweetDeek yet. This becomes very difficult when the connection is weak.
@sam_witteveen
So so so agree with these. I hope tweetdeck implement them
@pabloalmeida
Nice observations! Tweetdeck is just good…but can be better! You proved it!
A dream? Grouping Columns!
@meaalders
Hear, hear! Thank you Neal, for pointing out the bare necessities for managing your client’s Tweets. As a PR consultant I am facing the same problems as you, so let me know when Tweetdeck answers your calls… can’t wait actually!
@cameronolivier
@Atul – There is a way currently, and that’s to use the ‘filter this column’ button, choose ‘text’ and ‘-’ to exclude, and then type the text you want to exclude in there. so #irritatingevent or what have you. Should work a charm.
I only wish the filters would be persistent across opening/closing the app – I used to use filters a lot, but having to set it up each time i opened tweetdeck has become too much of a pain. :/
Nice list though! I agree with all of them – would be fantastic! I’d love an ‘undo’ feature (as in ctrl-z) – because all too often I somehow manage to shift-home on a tweet and then type over what I’ve just written – or mistype something or whatever, and not being able to undo that is super frustrating!
Also, a sligh delay – like gmail’s – on sending a tweet, so I can undo tweets that were sent prematurely, or before I’ve edited it properly would be stellar!
Regarding Tweetdeck being a resource hog, my understanding is that it’s actually the AIR Framework that has memory issues, and there’s nothing much Tweetdeck can do about it, although they have made huge inroads in the last few releases to curtailing the memory leaks it seemed to have – although mine is currently at 170-odd Mbs..
@richardbarley
Hi again!
Just wanted to say thanks to all the commenters here for your support. Its really great to read feedback that shows how much you love TweetDeck. I am so excited about the next few releases we have planned and am looking forward to ticking off a lot of these wishlist items for you all.
Cheers
Richard Barley
TweetDeck Community Manager
@dennisvinkler
Good points! I hope Tweetdeck agree
@nicchick
Perhaps you need to try Mixero!
@sylviahubbard1
Loving this! Wow! You’re awesome @nealwiser
@philmontero
Great post Neal and delighted to see Richard aware of the post and replying – very encouraging. I would say the biggies for me are knowing if someone is following, better column management (which is clearly being worked on), scheduled tweets, and one that should be a no-brainer easy fix . . . allow us to choose a time format! It makes me crazy that it only shows military/24-hour time. Seems that would be simple to add an option to choose 12 or 24-hour time format.
I tried Tweetdeck a while ago and eventually moved to HootSuite – but recently Hootsuite had some downtime and I downloaded the latest build of Tweetdeck and it won me over. I do miss scheduling tweets but I just jump back to Hootsuite when I need to do that.
But seriously – please fix the time thing!
@munropaservices
I love my Tweetdeck & wouldn’t consider using another platform… however, I run 3 accounts & have 18 columns! I don’t care about a few of your suggestions (moving columns quicker, I rarely use the navigator, & don’t care if they’re following me back or online)
I would love to see a way of managing my columns more easily though… It can make me go cross-eyed on occasion!
@hectorhenry17
Wao good post
I would like to see tumbr post its would be such a good fact that we sooon see it on Deck
HI Richard, I am 100% with what Neal lists and I think you guys are doing a great job there.
Sure, it’s a small team, but it’s a great product. Look forward to all those rollouts. The sooner the better for all of us..specially everything and anything about columns and as Darren said, ’scheduling’ is a pain to sign in and sign out. See what you can do.
@WendyMerritt
I’d like to see it integrate with Ping.fm so I can stop switching in between 3 different programs to do everything I need to accomplish.
I also think if they implemented some of the tabs features that Seesmic for Windows uses it would greatly improve the readibility. It would also lesson the number of columns you have open in one screen.
For right now I switch between Hootsuite, TweetDeck and Seesmic for Windows constantly! Whew! It makes me tired just typing all those!
Blessings,
Wendy
@crossmark
And the ability to schedule tweets!
Agree with all the points. Also I’d love to be able to detect those users that I unfollowed once, not to follow them again. It would be very useful feature.