Twitter wants you to know that TweetDeck is its most powerful weapon — and you can’t have it.

You can’t have it, that is, if you’re using an Android phone or an iPhone — or if you for some reason prefer the old version of TweetDeck that was built on Adobe’s resource-hogging Air platform. Twitter announced via a blog post today that it’s discontinuing TweetDeck for these three platforms, effective as of May, 2013.

TweetDeck is the most powerful Twitter tool for tracking real-time conversations. Its flexibility and customizable layout let you keep up with what’s happening on Twitter, across multiple topics and accounts, in real time. To continue to offer a great product that addresses your unique needs, we’re going to focus our development efforts on our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck. To that end, we are discontinuing support for our older apps: TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone. They will be removed from their respective app stores in early May and will stop functioning shortly thereafter. We’ll also discontinue support for our Facebook integration.

That explanation doesn’t quite add up. Underlying the shift is the fact that these earlier versions of TweetDeck use the old, 1.0 version of the Twitter API — and that API, with its substandard authentication scheme, is rapidly being phased out. But surely a company that is easily worth $9 or $10 billion on the private market, and that has raised over $1 billion in capital to date, has enough resources to develop Twitter API 1.1-based versions of the TweetDeck Android and iPhone clients, right?

Maybe not. The discontinuing of Facebook integration is a strategic move, not a tactical one. Twitter is consolidating control of its blogging platform and gearing up for a showdown with Facebook. It’s possible that it also wants to avoid being beholden to the vagaries of Apple’s and Google’s app stores and will be focusing its development efforts on Web apps from now on.

And as for the mobile clients, it may simply be that the power users who are TweetDeck’s audience simply aren’t using the mobile version. “Over the past few years, we’ve seen a steady trend towards people using TweetDeck on their computers and Twitter on their mobile devices,” Twitter wrote.

Ironically, Twitter made this announcement on Tweetdeck’s Posterous, a blogging platform Twitter acquired a year ago and — you guessed it — is now shutting down. So that Posterous post will go away on April 30, the early version of Tweetdeck will follow it into the void in May, and by June there will be nothing left but shiny, happy Twitter users holding hands.

I use TweetDeck daily to keep track of multiple Twitter lists in real time: one for VentureBeat people, one for a shortlist of close friends, one for news feeds, and a column for @ replies to me. I don’t miss the old Adobe Air-based version (because it was constantly pegging the meter on my CPU utilization), but I am slightly annoyed that it won’t be available as a mobile app anymore — though I’ll be honest, the multi-column view that is TweetDeck’s main attraction doesn’t even really work on a mobile device, which is why I mostly use the regular Twitter client on my phone and tablet.

Still: How much am I paying for TweetDeck? Zero. I can complain all day, but Twitter’s not going to lose any business if I stop using it.

Photo credit: ianmunroe via photopin cc

In with the smart and out with the stupid — Twitter search, that is.

TweetDeck is finally ready to wise up with search improvements that make the web and desktop client for Twitter power users as intelligent as Twitter’s other applications.

The Twitter-owned client for viewing tweet streams in columns today announced that its apps are getting typeahead and people search functionality, important features that should help you find what you’re looking for faster.

Now, when you visit the TweetDeck search box, you’ll find a dynamic drop-down menu that changes as you type. The enhanced search box contains all of your previous searches on launch. It also works in real-time to autocomplete your queries and simultaneously look for matching Twitter users, which means results get better with each character that you type. You can also directly interact with tweets and accounts displayed from inside the search box.

Basically, the overall search experience inside TweetDeck now resembles what you find in Twitter’s mobile applications.

The search improvements are available today in the last version of TweetDeck for Chrome. They will make their way to TweetDeck’s web, PC, and Mac versions in the weeks ahead.

Owl image via Shutterstock

With the hundreds of submissions flooding community news site Reddit every hour, there are very few options that help you manage all that information better than a standard web browser.

Well, at least two Reddit users want to change that with the creation of Reditr, a Tweetdeck-like desktop app that arranges the user-submitted news posts into a wall of information.

Tweetdeck works by arranging a Twitter user’s various streams of information in vertical columns that sit side-by-side. And Reditr does pretty much the same thing for Reddit content. The first main column you’ll see when pulling up the desktop app is a column for all the popular submissions from subreddits  (aka the different categories of news on Reddit) you’re subscribed to. You can even choose how you’d like those submissions shorted (Hot, Top, New, Controversial) by clicking a button at the top of the column.

By default, each individual subreddit you’re subscribed to is displayed in its own column, which you can access through a set of numbers at the top of the screen. (See screenshots below.) You can change the position of the subreddit columns, delete columns you don’t want, and create new ones. Each column also allows you to find certain submissions using a filter and to set custom rules for when you log onto the app.

Clicking on a submission brings up its own page that displays content in its own custom reader, with comments listed below the reader itself. Part of me wishes it had a built-in browser function, as I usually only toggle on a reader-mode if the site’s advertising or load time prevents me from actually viewing the content.

Reditr has lots of customization features, including the ability to set hot keys, set the width of each column, change the background color, and more. It’s also a fully functional Reddit client that allows you to vote on submission and comments, check and reply to messages, save content, and more.

Overall, is a pretty ambitious project, and one that could come in handy for people who routinely consume all the popular submissions on a lazy afternoon.

As for the Reditr project itself, it was created by Dimitry Vinogradov and David Zorychta back in April. The desktop app, which is currently supported through donations, is available for OS X, Windows, and Ubuntu Linux. I’ve emailed the developers for more information, and will update the post with anything new.

Check out a gallery of screenshots below showing the Reditr app in action.

TweetDeck, the information network’s only semi-unconventional application, updated today with a lighter, brighter color scheme, a number of incremental improvements to help power users make the most of their columns, and one noticeable flaw that prevents people from viewing all of their mentions in the order they received them.

Wednesday, Twitter released the updated version of TweetDeck for web, Chrome, Mac, and Windows. Most noticeable in the release is a lighter theme that now gives users a choice between black and white backgrounds.

The information network also added different font sizes, made scrolling between columns faster and less wonky (thank goodness!), and implemented improvements to user profiles.

Twitter users posted mixed reactions to the changes, with some indicating that the design changes have made the application look a bit odd.

The new TweetDeck is weird. It's uglier than the old one and it seems to be showing only old mentions & messages. Huh.—
Connor Beaton (@zcbeaton) October 10, 2012

The update, unfortunately, isn’t without functional oddities as well. This TweetDeck user noticed that, upon update, her mentions and interactions from the previous 12 hours were nowhere to be found. A scan of Twitter updates shows that plenty of other users are experiencing the same bug. Some users have reported missing days and weeks of past mentions. Others have found mentions to be out of order.

Remember that time I upgraded the Tweetdeck desktop app and it lost a week and a half of @ replies and mentions? You know, just now?—
Chris Thilk (@ChrisThilk) October 10, 2012

The Tweetdeck update from Twitter is great! Now my Mentions timeline renders *backwards*. Makes total sense. twitpic.com/b2xgrq—
Mike Rastiello (@mikerastiello) October 10, 2012

When pinged for comment, a Twitter spokesperson said the company was looking into the misplaced mentions matter.

Photo credit: Bas Boerman/Flickr

TweetDeck is the lone, rogue Twitter-owned client that doesn’t appear to be governed by the same consistency rules of the information network’s official web and mobile applications, but that doesn’t mean it can’t toe the line from time to time.

Case in point, the TweetDeck web and Chrome applications were updated Wednesday with two of Twitter’s most enriching features: header photos and expanded tweets. The additions improve how users experience Twitter profiles and individual tweets.

The header photos, introduced on Twitter.com and mobile apps last week, and are now visible on TweetDeck profiles as well and show off the personalities of users.

The client has also been updated with expanded tweets (pictured right), or Twitter Cards as they’re also called, to provide users with article snippets, in-line with each tweet, from media partners.

“This card shows an image preview from the sites, a short description of the page and often a link to the author, giving you a handy summary of the link to help you decide whether to view the web page,” TweetDeck product manager Richard Barley said in a blog post.

TweetDeck’s latest updates are web-only, however, and haven’t been carried over to the Mac and PC versions of the application yet.

Shocker of all shockers. Twitter has — wait for it — updated yet another one of its applications. This time it’s Twitter web and desktop client TweetDeck that’s getting the update love.

Acquired by the information network last year, TweetDeck is the robust, column-heavy application for power Twitter users. Today, TweetDeck’s makers have released version 1.5 to make column navigation faster and specific tweet actions easier to access.

The TweetDeck application now arranges columns in one continuous horizontal row for a fluid left and right scrolling experience. A new “Columns” button has been added front-and-center to make reordering columns a breeze and to make jumping to a specific column a much brisker task.

Also new is a little menu icon included with every tweet that provides users with quick access to tweet actions such as follow, direct message, add to list, and report spam actions from the main column view.

The improvements are mostly about making TweetDeck more efficient as a power tool and less in line with the app consistency upgrades Twitter has pushed out to its mobile applications. The refinements, however, should come as welcome changes to the Twitter user that tracks a bevy of columns and interacts with tweets on a frequent basis. So me, basically.

Version 1.5 is available now for web, Chrome, and Windows users. The Mac edition should hit the Mac App Store soon.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

TweetDeck is back online after a potentially disastrous bug gave a small number of Twitter users access to other members’ accounts.

“As soon as we learned about the issue today, we took TweetDeck down to diagnose the situation,” Twitter’s head of communications Caroyln Penner said in an email statement to VentureBeat. “We discovered a bug that caused a very small number of TweetDeck users to have access to other TweetDeck users’ accounts.”

Friday, Twitter user Geoff Evason discovered that he was inadvertently granted access to hundreds of Twitter and Facebook accounts via TweetDeck and could post on their behalf. As a result, the popular Twitter-owned social media dashboard was taken offline as engineers investigated the issue. TweetDeck was back online Friday as of 9:05 p.m. Pacific.

“No one’s password was compromised, and we aren’t aware of any instances where this access was used maliciously,” Penner said.

While the TweetDeck bug will go down as more of a mortifying blight on the company’s reputation than a serious security breach, Twitter’s handling of the matter strikes us as troubling.

The company is attempting to assert itself as a grown-up business but did little to inform the public until after the issue was identified and fixed. Twitter did not initially offer an explanation for why TweetDeck was taken offline, leaving Evason, journalists, and application users wondering about the severity of the issue for several hours.

These types of rookie mistakes could make Madison Avenue executives think twice about the stability and maturity of the company as it tries to stand tall next to Google and Facebook in the big leagues.

Penner’s full statement is included below.

TweetDeck is now back online.

As soon as we learned about the issue today, we took TweetDeck down to diagnose the situation. We discovered a bug that caused a very small number of TweetDeck users to have access to other TweetDeck users’ accounts. (The accounts that could be accessed were random; it was not possible to select specific accounts and access them.)

No one’s password was compromised, and we aren’t aware of any instances where this access was used maliciously. As a precaution, we removed account credentials associated with affected TweetDeck users; they will need to log in to authorize the TweetDeck application to access their accounts.

Photo credit: laRuth/Flickr

In a fail whale moment of a different kind, TweetDeck was taken down Friday afternoon after a Twitterer claimed to have found a bug that gave him access to hundreds of accounts.

Twitter user Geoff Evason said he discovered the flaw Friday that allowed him to access other Twitter and Facebook accounts via TweetDeck, and post on their behalf. Evason tweeted his distributing finding with a screenshot of the accounts he was inexplicably granted access to (pictured right). He also said that he was able to tweet “test” and “testing” from another user’s account.

TweetDeck is the Twitter-owned social media dashboard. The popular desktop and web client received its biggest update yet late last week, but engineer’s may have pushed the release out too soon if today’s incident checks out.

“For the past few days when I logged into TweetDeck’s Chrome client TweetDeck would crash. Today, I downloaded the Mac client and was able to log in. I was shown Twitter and Facebook streams that were from accounts that we’re not mine,” Evason told VentureBeat. “When I tried posting, I was able to select from hundreds of accounts.”

Twitter is not acknowledging Evason’s claims, nor providing clarification on the matter. It has, however, publicly admitted to taking TweetDeck offline.

“TweetDeck is currently down while we look into an issue. Apologies for the inconvenience,” the TweetDeck Twitter account said in a rather ambiguous update Friday afternoon.

TweetDeck users have been able to access and tweet from the desktop application without interruption, but those that log out and attempt to log back in are denied access.

According to Evason, the security breach was an accidental occurrence not of his own doing. “To be clear — I didn’t hack TweetDeck or find an exploit,” he said. “I just logged in and was presented with lots of accounts that weren’t mine. I sent the two simple ‘test’ tweets so I could add more info in my report to Twitter.”

A Twitter spokesperson declined to provide additional comment. Evason said he has not received a reply from Twitter about the incident.

Update: Twitter claims that the bug is fixed and was not used maliciously. TweetDeck was back online Friday as of 9:05 p.m. Pacific.

[via TechCrunch]

Photo credit: tveskov/Flickr

Twitter is showing a continued commitment to its popular desktop and web property TweetDeck with the release of an updated version that brings the “New-New Twitter” experience to Windows, Mac, and Chrome desktops.

The new 1.3 version brings with it a bevy of new features that will keep Twitter-holics glued to even more columns for even longer.

Most notably, the application includes two special columns allowing Twitter users to track follower activity in real time or keep up with all of the interactions related to their tweets.

TweetDeck, as a reminder, is the all-in-one, consumer-tailored social media dashboard fine-tuned for all types of Twitter stalking. It’s insanely popular with hyperactive Twitter users and journalists everywhere. The column-heavy social utility was acquired by Twitter in May 2011 for a reported $40 million. The tool continues to operate semi-independently — deeper Twitter hooks have been added, of course — and maintains its oringial name.

Existing TweetDeck users should appreciate today’s new “Activity” and “Interactions” columns; they carry over Activity tab features from the new-new Twitter.com December update over to the desktop. TweetDeck has also been visually enhanced with inline media previews, allowing users to view thumbnail previews of images and videos inside tweets.

Also new is the ability to (finally) manage Twitter lists and an option to “Edit & RT.” The latter change, for the uninitiated, is a pretty big deal for power Twitterers who simply can’t live without the “RT” in our retweets or the ability to edit and add text before firing off someone else’s 140-character missive.

We’ve done a little poking around, and we like what we see so far. It’s hard not to sit and stare as activity and interaction notifications pour in. We did notice, however, that the Mac application will hiccup at times if you’ve got quite a number of columns running.

The new version of TweetDeck comes just one day after the sixth anniversary of the first tweet. The information network has 140 million active users and sees more than 340 million tweets per day, Twitter said yesterday.

Twitter, the streaming information feed of 140-character fame, announced today that it is revamping its flagship Twitter.com site to break it into a “two-pane” experience that allows users to embed media like photos and videos into Tweets.

By clicking on a Tweet, users can bring up a second pane that brings up a feed of other tweets as well as some information about the user — “all while never losing your place in the timeline,” Twitter co-founder Evan Williams said. The new interface allows users to focus on individual users and bring up a list of previous Tweets, as well as embed photos, videos and maps — and likely other forms of media — right in the stream.

Twitter made arrangements with YouTube, Vimeo and USTREAM, as well as all the typical Twitter photo gateways, a total of 16 outside media providers.

Twitter has exploded in popularity, especially in the mobile market where usage has grown 250 percent since the beginning of the year. About 16 percent of new users come from mobile sources — like Twitter’s iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps — Williams said.

But Twitter.com is still how most people experience twitter, Williams said. 78 percent of active Twitter users have used Twitter.com in the last 30 days — more people logged in on a monthly basis than almost all other clients, like mobile platforms and TweetDeck, combined. About 25 percent of all Tweets come with links, so it was natural that Twitter evolve to promote that, Williams said.

The new service will launch for some users today, but the whole rollout will be incremental and no specific dates have been hammered out yet. The new advertisement, much like Apple’s recent FaceTime ads, seems designed to pull at the heartstrings — with Indie rock, relationships and romance par for the course.