You should use TweetDeck

We saw one many changes on Twitter in recent months, including the introduction of a subscription plan with benefits, adjustments to how you respond to work, and a new font that has not been universally well received. Then there are the fleets, which ended up being very ephemeral.

But Twitter is also busy updating and evolving its other Twitter client: TweetDeck. Launched in 2008 and acquired by Twitter in 2011, you can think of TweetDeck as a window into the social network for advanced users – get real-time updates, advanced search tools, and more.

If you’ve never tried TweetDeck, or if you’ve used it before and forgotten about it, here are some of its key features, and it might suit you better than Twitter’s default web client. As we said, Twitter is test updates on TweetDeck as well, so it looks like there are even more features on the way (and we’re crossed with our fingers hoping there’s no problem yet).

Right now, TweetDeck is only available in a web browser, but it is possible that mobile apps are planned somewhere along the line while Twitter continues to develop the product.

Watch it all in real time

The key to TweetDeck is its extensive design, divided into customizable columns over which you have total control. While Twitter is usually a single column, showing the tweets of the people you follow, TweetDeck allows you to have that column and more next to it. If you have a widescreen monitor, you can monitor a large number of tweets at once.

You can add new columns by clicking the big blue + on the left side of the TweetDeck interface. In addition to your main Twitter timeline (tweets from people you follow), you can set up columns to show your notifications, mentions, direct messages, tweets you like, specific user tweets, tweets that match a specific search term, one of your Twitter lists, a trending topic you choose, and more.

So, for example, you might want to set up a search term for a specific hashtag in a breaking news story and monitor your tweets as they enter. You can also create a list with a subset of the most interesting people you follow. Twitter and use it instead of your own timeline (especially when you’re just looking for a quick update on what’s happening on the social network).