Using Twitter? Get TweetDeck.
February 25th, 2009 | 
Author: The PenguinSix Blog also here in Calvert County wrote about TweetDeck, a PC based interface for Twitter messages. The author is a technically savvy guy so I went to the TweetDeck site and downloaded the program. Until now I was using the simple website interface for Twitter. Since downloading TweetDeck I only go back to the website to see who is following me and to search for new Twitterers I want to follow.
TweetDeck runs in the background and checks the Twitter site for the latest Tweets. When new Tweets are downloaded a polite low-level bird noise comes from the computer speakers. There are three columns to the interface, All Friends, Replies, and Direct Messages. The three types of tweets are separated into columns that are easy to read. I can leave TweetDeck running on one computer monitor and work using the other. You need two monitors on a PC to truly enjoy using a computer.
The TweetDeck interface also includes a big box at the top of the program window to type in your Tweets, replies, and direct messages. A convenient box also allows you to shorten a URL using the bit.ly service. The box counts your characters so you don’t exceed the maximum allowed.
The user interface, UI is intuitive. Anyone can figure it out very quickly. Whether you are new to Twitter or an old salt I think you will like TweetDeck.
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PC based applications that use Twitter apparently have what is called a 100 messages per hours API limit. See: http://tweetdeck.posterous.com/what-does-rate-lim…
When this happens I believe that messages are no longer received until the API limit is reduced. The Twitter website has no such limit.
If you look at this from Twitters point of view it kind of makes sense. The third party apps on PC's could seriously over extend servers at Twitters because they can check more often than the web page that requires a human push a button on a UI to update.
I get huge numbers of messages from Fox News (how do they avoid the limit I wonder?) and send just a few Tweets but have found myself exceeding Twitters limits. Other users are sharing that not all of their direct messages are downloading in TweetDeck. Probably related.
Check the settings section in TweetDeck to tell the application not to download all the OLD direct messages each time you restart TweetDeck and this might reduce your initial API count at start up time.
This API limit thing is making it difficult to follow people with lots of messages. I stopped following two busy feeds to see if TweetDeck will follow the rest but doing that reduces it's usefulness.
Under settings on the API tab I set all columns to update every 6 minutes instead of every one minute. When this program connects to Twitter it uses up API credits whether messages exist or not.