The Death of Tweetdeck, Part 3

Remember how months and months ago I was looking for a replacement for Tweetdeck because they discontinued a desktop app? And I found a new one, but it kept crashing my touchpad driver so I stopped using it? And I really didn’t like the one I got to replace it because it only showed you a fixed number of tweets and just kind of sucked in general? Any of this ringing a bell?

Anyway, I got really sick of the replacement and started looking for yet another replacement. And I found one! And it’s actually really good!

It’s called Tweeten and let me break it down for you…

Pros

---Infinite scrolling for your tweets. I can’t believe there’s apps where you can’t!

---You can actually see pictures in tweets, which you couldn’t in Yoono.

---Fairly easy to figure out, especially if you remember how Tweetdeck worked.

Cons

---Can only update to Twitter, not any other platforms (if that’s really what you want).

---Not always intuitive. I don’t want to admit how long it took me to realize that you can just hit N to bring up a window to type your tweet, just like in Tweetdeck.

---Can’t hit enter to tweet. Have to it Ctrl + Enter. Like some kind of savage.

TL;DR: It’s basically a clone of Tweetdeck, and that’s why you should use it if you want it for your desktop. So yeah. Go with this. The only other con I have is that it took me so long to find it.

The Death of Tweetdeck, Part 2

I didn’t expect this to be a continuing series, but frankly, I’ve been kind of annoyed with Janetter’s, which I think was causing problems with my computer. So I went looking for another, and found Yoono.

It’s…okay, I guess. Not great. Servicable, I think is the best word for it.

Pros

---Still calls Favorites Favorites! Woo!

---Fairly intuitive.

---Lets you link a bunch of different social media sites, so you can not only look at updates from Facebook and LinkedIn and whatever, you can also update them all at the same time.

Cons

---There’s very little customization of the appearance, and I’m not a fan of the plain white background.

---Navigation is a bit awkward, although you should be able to figure it out (there’s a little icon in the bottom corner that lets you scroll).

---The updates only come in about every minute or so it’s not exactly instant.

---It only lets you go look at a fixed number of posts, so you can only go back so far. Seriously?!

Honestly, I’d stick with Janetter over this one…except, like I said, I think Janetter is causing some glitches in my computer, namely that it’s causing touchpad driver to periodically crash, which means I can’t scroll with it and that’s just so annoying. I don’t know if this problem would happen to other people—my computer is at the crappy end of the technology scale—but the fact that it’s happening at all makes me reconsider their worth. And since I’ve uninstalled it, I haven’t had any problems with my touchpad.

Sigh. We really can’t get something as good as Tweetdeck, can we?

The Death Of Tweetdeck

Well, I guess it’s not technically dead. They were all “Oh it’s still online so it’s not like it’s really gone! Ha ha—wait, why are you all leaving?” Like we don’t know that they canceled the desktop version of Tweetdeck because they don’t get any ad revenue from it.

Twitter has made some really annoying changes over the years. The worst part is they aren’t awful. Yes, that makes sense, shut up. The changes they’ve made aren’t anything that would make someone quit. But they do make it a lot suckier to use. Case in point: stop calling Favorites Likes damn it this isn’t Facebook. And like dropping the desktop version of Tweetdeck. Yeah, it’s lame as hell, but you’re not going to quit and trash all of your followers for it.

But I really liked being able to access Twitter without having to go through my browser. I especially liked the fact that it presented your lists in easy to read columns where you could keep your important/interesting follows separate from the ones that are basically spambots. Overall, I liked the convenience and presentation of Tweetdeck more than Twitter itself. So obviously I’m going to find something to replace it rather than use the damn browser version. Seriously, Twitter must think I’m stupid.

And that’s how I found Janetter. It’s basically another Tweetdeck, but…well, it’s not a perfect one. Here, let me break it down for you:

Pros

---Can hit enter to tweet again. The fact that you couldn’t do that on Tweetdeck really bugged me.

---Has little wavy lines to show when you’ve caught up to tweets that you’ve already read.

---Still calls Favorites Favorites. Honestly, this may be the clincher.

Cons

---The settings aren’t very intuitive, so they can be hard to figure out.

---Does not show favorites or RTs : (. Unless there’s some way to do it through the settings that I can’t figure out (see above).

---Can’t click on a tweet and see all the responses to it. Kind of annoying that you see a response and can’t figure out what it’s for without going to Twitter.

---Interface is a bit jerky, and it can be slow at displaying new Tweets.

So that’s it. In all, it’s an acceptable substitute. Plus we have Favorites. I really, really like that.

Kicking Us When We’re Down

It was announced in March, but in the hubbub over Reader (sob), I overlooked it (I certainly didn’t see a notice for it like others did). The horrible news is…TweetDeck is being canceled. Murdered, if you will. I assume because it’s something I like. Also because they can’t really make money on advertising when people go through the desktop app, but like I care about that.

In all fairness, it’s not being completely taken away—in exactly one week, I might add. It will still be available as a web service, much like all the aggregators I’ve been reviewing over the past month. But I used the desktop version, amusing since I also posted how I didn’t like desktop readers. I just think it’s different with Twitter. I like to check it, well, a lot, and I’m often online at the same time. For whatever reason, I prefer to keep my TweetDeck separate from my online stuff.

Right now I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I could go with the online version of TweetDeck, even if I really don’t want to. I could also switch to another desktop app, of which there are painfully few. There’s one called MetroTwit, which isn’t terrible, but it starts up very slowly for me. This might be my computer, which isn’t exactly high tech. Either way, I’m not sure I’d like to put up with this every time I open the dang thing. However, it’s also a pretty nice app. It shows my new mentions/messages when I open it, I was easily able to customize it similar to my TweetDeck set up in the few ways it wasn’t already a close copy, and most importantly, I’m able to send a tweet by hitting enter. Yes, that is very important to me.

So I’m caught between the online TweetDeck and MetroTwit. They’re pretty neck and neck right now. I’ll have to muse on this some more.

Hey. This is serious business.