Twitter just rolled out a TweetDeck update that improves some of the cosmetic features to the site.   You can now make the TweetDeck background “light” as opposed to “dark.”  You can make the font size “small,” “medium” or “large.”  They must have focus-grouped a preschool on opposite day.

Benchmarked to HootSuite, it’s evident how little Twitter has done to make TweetDeck a competitive product.  For a company trying to bring people back to the Twitter ecosystem by any means necessary, it speaks volumes about their priorities for user experience and for the TweetDeck product.

The TweetDeck timeline is inexcusable

I wrote this the other day and it’s infuriating to repeat after a company updates its software, but the lack of control of the Twitter timeline on TweetDeck makes it nearly unusable.  Updates vomit on the screen randomly, which renders TweetDeck less and less useful as you grow followers.  It’s inexcusable for Twitter to have a social management tool that can’t effectively manage its own timeline, but that’s TweetDeck.

HootSuite in contrast allows manual updates as well as five other timed options.  The actual Twitter app allows for manual updates as well….

Need an app that only manages Facebook and Twitter?  Me neither.

I suppose when you put yourself out on an island, your social circles are rather limited.  By isolating LinkedIn and Google, maybe it’s difficult to imagine that they would reciprocate their APIs (though in honestly, Google probably wasn’t going to share anyhow).  What’s crazy about TweetDeck is how limited it is.  While you can manage multiple Twitter accounts with it, you can only manage one Facebook account and you can’t manage pages.

From a user standpoint, I wonder if a tool that manages multiple Twitter accounts and one Facebook account useful to the average Twitter user?  And how well positioned is it for the future when HootSuite is integrated with Instagram among others?

HootSuite makes the TweetDeck update look silly

While TweetDeck was developing the capability to change from white to black with the press of a button, HootSuite developed a channel on IFTTT.  The HootSuite complement of networks integrated with a host of other networks and applications, while TweetDeck developed the capability to see tweets with a lighter background.  The qualitative difference between TweetDeck and HootSuite has become quite large.

With similar products in HootSuite, GrabInbox and others – it’s curious that Twitter continues to put any resources into TweetDeck.  Hopefully next time they announce an update it will be more substantive than this one… or concede defeat and focus on their advertising products.

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Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is “social media research,” I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred’s 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout’s most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven’t entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

@jimdougherty

Writer about social media and tech at Leaders West, I also tweet as @leaderswest.

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