Own your money: TweetDeck

Hey Twitter Fans- Have you jumped on TweetDeck yet? This sweet Twitter client makes tweeting with your friends and fans a whole new ball game!

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the great features of TweetDeck to help you decide if you should give this desktop Twitter client a whirl.

TweetDeck, which is supported by Adobe Air, is a great way to break down your Twits Tweets and Twonversations down into manageable bites that you can keep on eye on. You can split your TweetDeck screen into several different columns to separate your Tweets into categories.
Your categories will separate your regular Tweetline- with all of your followers, @replies you have received, your DM’s-both sent and received, and your groups- if you want to create them. You can also have a column that covers the current Twitter buzz in a word cloud and you can add search columns.
The beauty of the columns is you never miss @replies and you can keep a better handle on the conversations you follow the closest, while still searching for keyword phrases, topics of interest or any other specific thing you want to keep updated on.
You can keep TweetDeck minimized in your taskbar and a little window will pop up and notify you if you’ve received tweets. Oh- and it chirps by default. (I must say, I was one happy Twit when I found that little button in the settings!)
You can’t beat TweetDeck for searching Twitter. You can set up a column to search any keywords or topics you like and TweetDeck keeps a running global search, powered my Summize, of your search terms. This is a must-have way to maximize the information and networking potential of Twitter.
TweetDeck provides a column for your Direct Messages and the newest upgrade keeps track of both the DMs you send and the DMs you receive. This little feature is perfect for staying on track in an ongoing private conversation you’re having with an individual Twit, uh, follower. This feature alone makes TweetDeck a handy way to Twitter. I don’t know about you, but I get tired of switching back and forth between my Home and my DM pages on Twitter. TweetDeck lets me follow both without waiting on load time. You can also DM another Twit with the click of your mouse when you hover over their picture.
Another cool feature allows you to hover over the avatar of any tweet and reply, mark it as a favorite, DM or Retweet with the click of a button. When I’m on Twitter on the web and start seeing @replies that I would like to Retweet, I’ll open TweetDeck in a heartbeat to save the hassle of cutting and pasting and shortening a message.
TweetDeck just put out its latest upgrade- and it’s definitely headed in the right direction. One of the best new features is you can now shorten your Tweets if you run over 140 characters, right from the TweetDeck tweet panel. They’ve also added a spellchecker and you can now have narrower columns.

There is really only one feature about TweetDeck that I can live without, however. It’s really big. It makes sense, because it can handle a massive amount of information in a very user-friendly manner, but it will take a chunk out of your screen space. You can take TweetDeck down to a single column if you like and you can also grab the corner of the window and resize the entire application. It would be great if you could resize the individual columns easily, though, so when you resize you can still see each column. From what I see on the comments blog for TweetDeck, that feature will likely be coming soon.

Another feature that a lot of TweetDeck users are asking for is a better interface with some other social media programs like Growl, FriendFeed, Ping.fm and the like. Hang tight, though. You can already access 12seconds.tv and TwitScoop through direct buttons on the top of your TweetDeck and more are sure to follow.

TweetDeck is fascinating. It really is one of the best desktop clients you can use to narrow your Twitterverse- and focus in on the things you want the most from Twitter

Here’s the URL: http://www.tweetdeck.com/ Give TweetDeck a try- you’re going to love it!