TweetDeck was released to Public Beta this evening and is being accepted with welcome arms in the Twitter community. With a very slick UI and a much needed grouping feature this new Twitter Client is sure to knock the socks off of casual and power users alike. (Download from here: http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/)

Upon downloading install you are prompted to install Adobe Air, which for those of you who don’t know is a new Cross Platform development tool that allows developers to use their existing html, flash and flex coding skills to create and deploy Rich Internet Application to a user’s desktop.

Setup is simple, requiring simply your twitter username and password.

First Launch

After logging in you are immediately presented with a few columns. Tweets from everyone you are following and Replies. Replies include direct messages as well as replies made in public. Many users are reporting that the reply capabilities are superior to other Twitter clients because of it’s use of Summize: the real time Twitter conversation search engine.

User Interface

 One of the more exciting features that TweetDeck brings to the table is the ability for you to”Group” your friends into categories. As anyone that has a ton of people that they follow at any given time knows, following the flow of conversations or thoughts can be scattered and unorganized. With the new group function you can alleviate this undue stress by placing groups of people or tools into their own designated categories. (I illustrate a news grouping below)

As many different people use Twitter for a variety of purposes; this ability to group, while simple in nature opens up a world of possibilities as each user will find their own use for this feature.

Creating A Group

Group of News Tweets

Another handy feature is the ability to add global and local search panes  as well. Lets say you wanted to keep track of every mention of your favorite band, or your least favorite politician. Well here is where you can do this. Tweets appear to be updated every 4 minutes with no action required by the user. Following the growing excitement and quick adoption of this new application was a snap, accomplished by doing a global search for the term TweetDeck. Upon installation that is the first search I did and was blown away by the rush of people that were discovering the app by their friends mentioning it. It’s really fun to watch the power of Twitter happen in near real time.

Global Search: TweetDeck

You can of course Tweet from the client as well as reply to other user’s messages. ReTweet is handy if you want to share something you read globally and share it with your local followers.

Since this is a beta there are some missing features, most notably is the lack of ability to follow new people you might discover in your TwitterTravels. We have been assured that this feature is coming soon.

A quick tip as well, if you happen to maximize the window there is no button to resize the window to it’s starting position. Windows can help a bit here. By right clicking on the TweetDeck task bar icon you can select “Restore” to bring it back to it’s native size.

Take a look at TweetDeck’s Twitter page here: http://twitter.com/tweetdeck

And of course look me up if you enjoyed this review here: http://twitter.com/genecyber

-Shannon Prue