Major beta changes summon all hands to TweetDeck

A popular Twitter client gets stronger as TweetDeck's v0.19b release makes its way to users of the AIR-based application.

One of a number of desktop clients for managing one's Twitter habit, TweetDeck lets users sort active feeds into various configurable columns -- for instance, Friends, Newsfeeds, and Fictional Characters (to recognize what often seems to be the greatest area of growth on the microblogging service). It's built on the AIR platform, and versions are available for Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Vista.

Those requirements dismayed Twitter regular and funnyguy "joeschmitt," who tweeted, "Poor me. I want to try TweetDeck like all the cool kids, but my work computer is Win2K, so like Chrome, I'll be left out." Say it ain't so, Joe!

The latest revision comes just over a month after the last update -- the longest quiet period in the history of the three-month-old application. Developer Iain Dodsworth says that the project started to solve a problem familiar to many users following hundreds of streams.

"The inspiration for TweetDeck came from not being able to follow my own Twitter timeline very effectively," Dodsworth told BetaNews this afternoon. "I was missing tweets from my real friends who were drowned out by other people I was following. I decided to fix this for myself by splitting/segmenting the feed out to make it more manageable. And then along the way added new features such as Summize search and integrated Twitter-based services. I sent the app to ten people who I knew and they were extremely positive about it and it has grown from there."

Twitter is perhaps the only Web-based service in history with a fail message so well-known, it inspired its own NPR report. On the development side, Dodsworth reports that his relationship with the mothership is, well, nonexistent. "No relationship with Twitter unfortunately," he says. "I don't recall having ever spoken to anyone from Twitter or been approached."

As for progress in rendering the Fail Whale extinct, the Flex developer says that "Developing on the Twitter API has been problematic at times in terms of reliability but recently things do seem to be getting a lot better."

After a day of TweetDeck testing, this reviewer is happy with the changes, though still concerned that AIR applications slow down her Mac slightly. The columns look cleaner, with significant messages functions (reply, direct message, retweet, and remove) hidden beneath user icons until summoned by mouse rollover. And an adjustment that turns the Twitter entry field bright red when a message exceeds 140 characters is a surprisingly effective cure for (*ahem*) certain bad habits. Friend lists are more manageable with the new ability to follow or unfollow other users from their Profile panels, and various favorite/unfavorite, read/unread marking options help to increase the visual peace.

What TweetDeck won't be doing now or later is blending into the Twitter ecosystem.

"One of my aims with TweetDeck is to completely differentiate it from its closest competitors," said Dodsworth. "I like to think I'm approaching things from a different angle. For instance, TweetDeck will always be a large, possibly obtrusive application [on the desktop] rather than an out-of-the-way one. It's a deck, a dashboard-style UI. I am completely disinterested in a features war with other clients. I'd rather forge a different path."

So what is ahead? According to Dodsworth, multi-account support is next on deck for the application, and additions beyond that are under consideration as the TweetDeck community requests them. In turn, he says that it would be "ideal' if Twitter were to offer an XMPP data feed, or (failing that) an increase on the usage limit of the API, which can pose problems for users who subscribe to a truly vast number of streams.