Folks, TweetDeck is the hottest kid in town right now.
In fact, it's so hot, that it's rumored to have been acquired by Twitter for a whopping US $40- $50 million!
...and that's after UberMedia offered its owners $30 million for it!
[According to article, "Twitter To Buy TweetDeck For $40 Million – $50 Million", UberMedia (formerly postup) is the leading independent developer of applications and web-based services that make it easier for users to find, follow and communicate with others on Twitter and other social media platforms.
It is said to be developing a competitor to Twitter].
Well, for those of you who don't yet know what TweetDeck is...it's a piece of software (aka a Twitter client), that you install on your desktop, that allows you to manage your social network interactions from one place.
So it enables you to have a dashboard with columns representing your recent and historical conversations on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, FourSquare and MySpace...plus you can post status updates to all these social networks from TweetDeck at the same time, which is oh so sweet!
But there is another piece of software that does this very same thing...but more efficiently and intuitively.
It's a Google Chrome app called Seesmic. (Well, it was first introduced on Google Chrome. Now you can use it on IE, Firefox, iPhone, Android, etc.)
To me, Seesmic's user interface is better that TweetDeck's, as it's lighter in color (hence easier on the eyes), easier to navigate and much more helpful in enabling you to figure out how to manage all your social networks from one place.
Additionally, it allows you to add other social networks to your account and hence, dashboard.
E.g. in addition to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and FourSquare, they also have Ping.fm and Google Buzz as standard offerings.
TweetDeck is yet to allow you to add other social networks to their standard offering.
So, why has Seesmic not been as popular as TweetDeck?
Marketing, folks...it all comes down to marketing!
And maybe, just maybe, Seesmic boxed itself in at first, by only being offered as a Google Chrome app.
Unfortunately, Google Chrome, being the new entrant to the web browser market at the time (November 2009), had a lot of catching up to do to the web browser stalwarts - Firefox and Internet Explorer.
But you can test both for yourselves and make up your own minds.
Please let me know what you think,ok? :)
Gillian
Sources Include
1) Article,"Twitter To Buy TweetDeck For $40 Million – $50 Million", by Michael Arrington, TechCrunch, May 2,2011
2) Article,"TweetDeck Reportedly Still In Play", by Alexia Tsotis, TechCrunch , April 18,2011
3) Article, "UberMedia Acquires TweetDeck", by Brad McCarty, TheNextWeb.com, February 12, 2011
