TweetDeck: It offers more than Twitter

Social Media has made a big impact on our day to day life. It has now become an inevitable part of life and is a good way to get connected. From communities, groups, fan pages, discussion forums we have landed upon to a 140 character update.

What do you think is it that easy to get connected..?? Is it that easy to daily login in to your accounts on various social networking sites and check for the updates..??  “Oh..!!! It’s a tiresome task. Please don’t ask me to do that.” You could keep up with this for a short time and then you don’t feel like visiting these sites. And eventually, you are ‘disconnected’.

But technology never lets u get ‘disconnected’. Today, OrkutHeroes is introducing you to such an application which makes your social network life simpler, easier and brings it to ‘one click’ access.

What is it:

TweetDeck is a social media app developed on Adobe AIR with the sole aim of managing your twitter updates and multiple twitter accounts. Not only twitter accounts, it also let you manage your Facbeook, Linkedin and MySpace accounts. Oh..!!! That’s not all it has… You can even translate your tweets and updates to about 50 different languages. It stores your recent hashtags and also displays the popular tags. There’s more, it auto shortens URLs, upload your images, use images from photo sharing sites. Let’s explore all the features of TweetDeck. That would make you saw “wow..!!”.

How it works:

TweetDeck configures your twitter account during the first run after installation. Once you are done with it you can look ahead for exploring the cool features of this “Dark” themed App.  You can add/remove other Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin accounts through its ‘settings’ interface.

In this series of our Twitter and TweetDeck tutorials, today’s tutorial will help you get acquainted with TweetDeck’s interface. This tutorial covers the following topics:

1. Installing TweetDeck
2. Configuring twitter account
3. Understanding the interface
4. Searching People / Profile
5. Follow / Unfollow
6. Viewing a Profile
7. Sending a Tweet
8. Seding a Direct Message [DM]
9. Reply / Re-Tweet
10. Add to list / Search / Follow / Un follow / Block / Report Spam

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Here is a Step-by-Step Guide for you to use TweetDeck the ‘Smart’ Way:

TweetDeck Tutorial For Beginners

Step 1: Installing the App

First you need to install Adobe AIR to run Tweetdeck on your computer. You can get this app for free from  Adobe’s website, then go to official TweetDeck website www.tweetdeck.com and install Tweetdeck. Application is also available for iPhone as well. Once you are done with installing the app. You will be asked to login to your twitter account at first run. You can enter  your username and password to authenticate your account. And, from the next run, you will be automatically logged in.

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Step 2: Understanding the interface

At first sight it might look a bit odd to see a four column layout for your single page Twitter account. But this is one of the features making your Twitter simplified.

[click image for preview]

The first “All Friends” column displays tweets from all the friends you  are following.

The next “Mentions” displays the tweets you have been mentioned by your @username. So, its easier to look for tweets related to you.

“Direct Messages” displays all your DMs.

“TweetDeck Recommends” is an exclusive feature which displays different profile recommendations for you to follow.

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Step 3: Searching People / Profile:

“Quick Profile” will help you search people on twitter. When you click on the button marked in red circle, a pop up box opens. In the text box type the username you are looking for. Then TweetDeck will search for the profile, if it is found a new column will open up on the right.

[click image for preview]

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Step 4: Follow / Unfollow:

To follow / unfollow the searched profile simply click the buttons at the bottom.

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Step 5: Viewing a Profile

To view users profile from your tweets simply move your cursor over the display pic of the user, click on ‘other options’ then in the context menu  click ‘user’. Another list pops up displaying several options. Click on ‘view profile’ a new column will appear to the right with complete user profile.

[click image for preview]

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Step 6: Sending a Tweet

[click image for preview]

To send a tweet you need to click the yellow “compose update” button marked in red circle. This shows up another column marked with the red downwards arrow.

Here, simply type in your update and hit enter. It’s as easy and that simple J. To mention any of your friends use the same procedure as on twitter. Write “@username” then your tweet and hit enter.

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Step 7: Sending a Direct Message (DM)

You can quickly send a DM to your follower by simply typing in “D username” (for eg. D zazo ) followed by your text and hit enter. This would send a DM.

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Step 8:  Reply / Re-tweet

To reply / re-tweet your friends tweets, move your cursor over user’s display pic then click on the turning arrow sign. It automatically includes the hashtag as well.

To re-tweet, simply click the forward direction arrow exactly below the reply arrow. After you click the arrow, in the update column you will find two options: “re-tweet now” and “edit then tweet”. Select “re-tweet now” if you wish it to be tweeted without making any changes. “edit then tweet” allows you to edit the tweet and then post it by hitting enter.

If you wish to reply to all the users who have earlier re-tweeted the tweet being displayed on your page, move your mouse over the display pic of user. Next, click “other settings”, then click “tweet” and in the context menu click “reply to all”. By doing this TweetDeck will automatically include all the usernames and hashtags in the “compose update” box.

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Step 9: Add to list / Search / Follow / Un follow / Block / Report Spam :

In step 5 when you click on ‘user’ in the context menu, you find several options such as: Add to group / list, follow, unfollow, search, block , report spam. Simply click on the action you wish to perform.

To use “Add to List” option you must first create a list. To create a list click on the “add column” button shown in the figure.

[click image for preview]

After that a pop up box opens. Now, click on “new list” to create a list. Then you can enter the name of your list and select an option to make it private or public. Private Lists are only visible to you while Public Lists are visible to everyone. After this, you can add group members to your list.

[click image for preview]

Lists help you manage your friends and tweets in an organized way. So, you are waiting for what..?? Go and start with TweetDeck.

Here, we end up with the Beginner’s Guide to TweetDeck and Twitter. Hope you all like it and your queries are always welcome. Feel free to drop in your views and queries in the comment box and follow back to the comments. We would revert back to you as soon as possible.

Our upcoming tutorials will help you manage multiple Twitter accounts, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn accounts with TweetDeck.  And, will also introduce you to some quite exciting features of TweetDeck.

Subscribe to flockpost.com to get latest updates of upcoming articles on Twitter and TweetDeck in our “Tutorials for Twitter” series.

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