TweetDeck has always been the most popular answer when people asked “What’s the best Twitter client?” It had multiple accounts support, media display, scheduled tweets, and a bunch of other features that made Twitter power users pee their pants. However, ever since TweetDeck was acquired by Twitter, the set of features was noticeably stripped down to almost bare essentials. There were still columns and multiple accounts support, but a lot of the good stuff just went away. Until TweetDeck v1.3.
List Management
Your everyday casual Twitter users mostly don’t use lists to enhance their tweeting experience, but for power users, list management is essential. In TweetDeck v1.3, list management is given a significant role in the overall experience as users can now add, delete, and edit lists in a more intuitive fashion. Lists are also integrated into user profiles so you can easily add Twitter users to lists without going to the List Management window. It’s a big victory for power users everywhere!
Interactions
The Interactions section has been on Twitter’s web interface for a while now and finally, it has found its way to TweetDeck in the form of a new column. All types of interactions like when your tweets are favorited and when you are followed, retweeted, added to a list, or mentioned can now be viewed easily in one clean Interactions column. This feature would make those of us who don’t want to miss anything that’s happening with our Twitter accounts happy.
Activity
Similar to the new Interactions column, the new Activity column shows you recent activity not on your account but on the accounts of people you follow. You can see when they follow new people, when they add users to lists, or when they favorite tweets.
Media Previews
While we can already preview photos and videos in the old TweetDeck, the experience has been improved in the new version. Photos and videos can new be viewed right in TweetDeck in a large media player-like display. The days of tiny windows with tiny photos are gone. This feature can be disabled if you don’t want to see media previews when using TweetDeck.
Edit and Retweet
The old RT style of retweeting where you can add your own comments on a tweet before you post it is back. It seems a lot of people are still more comfortable in retweetnig other users with their own comments rather than the single-click retweet button way. The feature didn’t really go away even after the new method of retweeting has been embraced by a lot of users, but it is now given equal footing in the TweetDeck landscape rather than just being an alternative to the new retweet method.
How to Get the Update
For TweetDeck users on Windows, just close the application and once you restart, an auto-update will bring you the latest TweetDeck version. For Mac OS X users, you need to go to the Mac App Store’s Updates section where the new TweetDeck update should be available. Just grab it and you’re done. For those using the Chrome app, a simple restart of the browser should initiate an update for TweetDeck. Finally, for those who are using the web interface of TweetDeck, just refresh your browser.
