TweetDeck terrific for Facebook, no need to espouse Twitter

[Considering I started a Facebook fan page today for Tech Bottle, I thought it appropriate to write something about Facebook. It's been awhile.]

Don’t let the name mislead you, TweetDeck is a terrific program for Facebook. It is written in Adobe Air so it installs on PC Windows, Macs and even Linux. Here’s how it works and a list of some of the helpful features:

Upon loading TweetDeck, you can enter your Facebook login and password.  It stores them just like the Facebook website. After that, you add columns.  The choices for each column are: Full News Feed (same as Live Feed on the website), Status Updates, Wall Posts, Photos, Videos and Other (Links, etc.). You can also set up different columns for different Friends Lists. Below is a screen capture of what my TweetDeck looks like (the colors can be customized — these are the defaults):

Example Layout of TweetDeck

So, what’s the point?  Here are some benefits of using TweetDeck for Facebook:

1. Notifications!  You can set up TweetDeck to flash new updates from any column in the corner of your screen when the program is minimized.  You can also set up audible notifications for each column but, quite frankly, you’ll probably find that annoying.
2. The little gray boxes at the bottom of each column are especially useful — what’s popular in the column, filter/search the entire column for particular words or updates by a particular user and a clear button to blank the column and only show new updates.
3. Update your status from within TweetDeck. You can type your status update, drop pictures or links into the program and even set the program to auto-shorten the URLs.
4. You can view pictures and videos from within TweetDeck. Just click on them to blow them up to full size.

TweetDeck is in beta testing but I have not found it to be buggy. You can download it from the TweetDeck website (free).

P.S. If you use LinkedIN, TweetDeck now has support for LinkedIN.

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