Tweetdeck Maintains Integrity At The Cost Of A Rich User Experience

For this final blog post I decided to tackle the topic of rich user experience, with Tweetdeck in mind. What gives Tweetdeck an edge over other Twitter applications is how it utilizes multiple columns to divide search and tweet streams. Unlike the standard Twitter layout where searches must be done in lieu of viewing your own timeline, or following someone still obscures your ‘Home’ tweet stream. Tweetdeck places all of these in thin columns spread along one window, so a user can view all facets of Twitter at a glance.

Tweetdeck’s other great innovation that many corporate and marketing Twitter accounts have taken advantage of is the idea of being able to tweet from multiple Twitter accounts on the same application without needing to log out and back in. This allows for checking multiple Twitter accounts and sending messages out from what could be different social media arms of a company.

There are a few features that used to be a part of the user experience for Tweetdeck that’s missing from the application since Twitter’s acquisition of the company back in 2011. Integrations of other social networks such as Google+ and Facebook have been absent, as well as an ability to type longer than 140 characters and have the tweet link to a site that states the entire prolix tweet. Twitter has stressed that these features were not in line with Twitter’s overall vision for their platform, but nevertheless, many users have looked to other Twitter applications that have sprung up in Tweetdeck’s downsizing. This brings up an interesting discussion over whether the developer’s ‘vision’ is to be retained over user experience. Before being bought out, Tweetdeck was a much more versatile Twitter application. Now however, while under the Twitter banner and while Twitter restricts other non-Twitter apps from their API (to force users onto non-third party apps), Tweetdeck has been stripped of features that made it stand out among third-party Twitter applications, and Twitter’s own app.

It’s unfortunate that a company must curtail a user experience to fit its own ‘vision’ over what the users would most want out of the product, however a line between a developer’s own artistic integrity and what the user wants must be drawn somewhere.