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I spend a lot of time online, updating social media accounts and monitoring conversations on them. As a result, I’ve become attached to the tools of the trade. I have my favorites for specific functions and tasks. I have favorites that I recommend to friends and strangers. I have tools on which I spend hours every day. TweetDeck is one of them.
TweetDeck and I are old friends.
It was through TweetDeck that I was first introduced to the “deck” model of monitoring accounts. I could build a deck to track several keywords, a Twitter list, or a specific account or people involved in a project. It proved to be worth its weight in gold… more so since it was free.
What made TweetDeck so great was that I could connect several accounts, in different social media networks, and it gave me the option to decide which of them received any given update. It became my dashboard of preference, often staying open all day on a second monitor, updating info seamlessly while I worked off a main monitor. It became my second screen, my news, my connection — always on, always current.
For me, that ends today. At least to a certain degree.
Twitter announced to TweetDeck users last week that May 7th would mark the end of Facebook integration.
I can’t say that I’m completely surprised. I had already been informed that TweetDeck AIR and the iPhone app would stop working soon. I realized a few weeks ago that I could not add or edit the Facebook accounts I have attached to the web-based TweetDeck application. So it was just a matter of time.
I am still a bit stunned, though. You can expect something to happen and still be surprised when it does. That’s the case here.
TweetDeck will probably remain an excellent tool for tracking conversations on Twitter. But the fact that I’m no longer going to be able to update Facebook from it limits its usefulness for me. Day by day, project by project, I’m going to end up switching over to another all-inclusive tool (such as Hootsuite) until one day I will wonder “when was the last time I logged into TweetDeck?”
This follows the announcement of the “end” of Google Reader, the scare that Google Alerts was being discontinued, and my continued dismay that my Instagram images don’t “show” on Twitter the way they used to. I keep having to mourn my favorite online toys… and I’m getting tired of it. Especially since these toys make it possible to do my job.
Goodbye, TweetDeck. We may not be parting ways today, but we will be parting soon. I just know it.
— Written by: Sandra Fernandez
Photo by wigu at http://www.flickr.com/photos/wigu/3320775718/.
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