How and why I use Tweetdeck
This is another lesson in my TECH category that I think might be helpful to some of you. As you all may or may not know, I use Tweetdeck for all my Twitter needs. There are very specific reasons why I use Tweetdeck and I will spell them out for you here:
- Tweetdeck gives me a view of what is going on on Twitter AT A GLANCE. As you can see in the pic above, I can see what the people I follow are up to, I can see whenever “hotforwords” is mentioned (more on that below), I can see my direct messages, and more importantly, I can see what conversations are hot right now and what is trending. All of this is available at a glance. The what’s hot/trending allows me to get news faster than when it appears on the various news outlets.
- I am able to follow whenever my name is mentioned, not just replies to me. That is important as it gives me the ability to see conversations about me and help out.. for example someone might say “We should ask hotforwords about that word”, I can then chime in with the origin for them! :-)
- I can run Tweetdeck on my iPhone with the same columns (except for the TweetScoop and trending stuff, but I’m sure there is a way to add them. I will let you know as soon as I find out.)
I use Tweetdeck pretty close to how it comes out of the box except for two or three minor changes, which I list below:
Tweetdeck allows you to rearrange columns and add or kill them. I kill the second column, the @mentions column (click the x in the upper right of the column) and replace it with a Search “hotforwords” column (click the magnifying icon on the top row of buttons to create the search). I then move the search column to the second spot with the arrow at the bottom. I think doing this cuts down on your API calls which helps. Twitter limits the accessing of your Twitter account through another application to 150 reloads per hour. I *think* making the second column a search column eliminates API calls for that column.- I turn on the TweetScoop column by clicking the Owl button along the top row.

- I turn off sound notifications. Click the Wrench icon in the upper right to access the preferences.
Anyway, that’s how I use Tweetdeck. If you use Tweetdeck or any other app in a unique way, let me know in the comments blow.
If you want to give Tweetdeck a spin, click this image: ![]()




