The 5 Features I wish Tweetdeck had

I feel like Tweetdeck prescribed to the same philosophy as Dropbox, create something that accomplishes one task extremely well. Unfortunately that leaves a zillion other things left to do, and business teaches us that where there is a hole, there will be people willing to charge for the chance to fill it.   

Perhaps the most unfortunate part of Tweetdeck’s adventure through the internet is that Twitter now owns the service.  Being that Tweetdeck’s user base had to actually go download something to use the product, their base is likely more engaged with Twitter than others.  Follow me?  The goal of Twitter revolves around the real time sharing of ideas.  It seems that technology built on Adobe AIR would be an excellent place to experiment and deliver the most elegant user experience possible.  Has Twitter done that? 

NO!  Tweetdeck is my go to Twitter client and I absolutely love MOST of the functionality it has.  Unfortunately, there are some features missing that are starting to interrupt my day and here are a few of the more glaring problems.

Why is it so hard to Share?

What I want: You probably don’t share things nearly as much as I do (fire hose!), but it’s important for me to share something cool in every possible place I can.  It is literally my job to do so.  My ideal solution would be a share dialog popup that takes my tweet as written (with shortened URL) and allows me to send it wherever I want.  The closest I’ve gotten to this (and it’s far too complex for anyone other than me and Miguel) is IFTTT. 

What I get: The ability to link Tweetdeck to my Facebook account.

Undo Buttons

What I want: A button that undoes any stupid action I make.  For example, just now, I deleted my entire list of mentions.  Why can’t I bring them back?   They’re not gone.  In fact, if I open Twitter.com I can see them if I navigate to the @Mentions tab.  Also, an edit button for tweets would be really nice, but that’s asking a lot.

What I get: NOTHING

Tweetdeck’s API calls are a Lie

What I want: I want a refresh button that actually refreshes.  For me, the solution was to turn real time streaming off, which I wouldn’t have to do if it wasn’t such a train wreck to begin with.  Twitter owns Tweetdeck, why is this even an issue?

What I get: Real time streaming that gets throttled if you’re following hot topics.  In laymans terms: it gets really friggin slow and sometimes doesn’t do anything at all.  Since I can’t hit Tweetdeck the way I can with so many old and unresponsive computers, I have to settle for having Twitter open in a separate tab and banging my head against my desk in agony. 

Real Time Streaming Sucks

What I want: I’d like to see Twitter use those lists they “invented” and filter my stream with them.  Can you believe I actually have to navigate to a separate page to view a list I follow?  That’s completely ridiculous!  Viewing all should always be an option, but never the default.  Some of my followers are only part-time interesting.  Why should I have to full-time suffer through that?

My lists should help define what I see, which should then be presented to me in a manageable fashion.  Facebook ALMOST has it right, and given that I can set up search columns in Tweetdeck, you would think my problem would be solved.

What I get: I have to navigate through a real time stream that *might* decide to update all of my streams, one of my streams or none of my streams at totally random intervals (I don’t care what the specs say I defined, it’s random).  It also updates every time I want to click something, resulting in unintentional retweets and replies to the wrong people about the wrong subjects.  I’m willing to sacrifice my ability to hear what someone had for lunch for the chance to gain interesting stuff from my curated lists. 

Technically Tweetdeck does allow me to set up columns for the lists I want to follow, but that leaves Tweetdeck cluttered, which leads me to my next point.

Tweetdeck is Ugly

Ok, this time I’m switching it up.  Here’s what I get:

What I want: Besides “not that”, I want an elegant and simple solution to Tweetdeck’s flow of information.  I appreciate that I can customize colors, but how can the folks at Twitter sit idly by while Flipboard totally blows them away in the category of elegance?  How would this best be accomplished?  Simple, create a tab for the user to receive a summation of his or her Twitter feed from the day prior.  Paper.li does a fantastic job of curating Twitter streams into something beautiful, too bad the service is nigh useless.    

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