Some good news for TweetDeck users.

Now you can permanently remove Adobe AIR from your system and still use TweetDeck on Windows and MAC computers. Twitter, after unveiling a completely re-designed interface has pushed major upgrades on TweetDeck’s arsenal. A native TweetDeck client for Windows and MAC is available for free download, while you can use TweetDeck’s web interface at web.tweetdeck.com

Tweetdeck’s web UI (which was earlier available as a Chrome extension) now has a permanent web address, so in case you want to catch up on updates from your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Foursquare accounts on a web browser, TweetDeck’s web UI is for you.

No need to install anything, simply sign in with your TweetDeck account and that will be all.

The native desktop client of TweetDeck for Windows is a complete mirror copy of TweetDeck’s web interface, just see it to believe it:

The idea here is to provide an exactly same interface everywhere, whether you’re using the Adobe AIR application, the native desktop client or the web version of TweetDeck. However, the native client has a couple of shortcomings, which makes it less attractive that its Adobe Air counterpart:

• No single column view is supported on the native TweetDeck client for Windows and MAC and neither the single column view is accessible from the web interface. You have to remove all the columns one by one and then resize the client window. Bad, real bad!
• Very few settings and controls, no way to position notification windows and neither you can turn off the notification sound. Desktop alerts of mentions and direct messages might be distracting, if they arrive too frequently.
• No ability to choose advanced options for specific columns. All the columns get the same notification settings, so I will not be using Twitter lists on the web version of TweetDeck and overwhelm myself with a storm of updates every nanosecond.
• Both the clients run well without Adobe AIR but memory consumption is fairly high in the Windows desktop client of TweetDeck. This just doesn’t make any sense, the Adobe AIR client consumes around 62 K while the Non Adobe Air one consumes 52 K of memory alone?

Comparatively, the web UI of TweetDeck consumes a lot less memory

Is This A Downgrade?

The new clients removed features which are useful, I use them every single day. On one hand Twitter is removing TweetDeck’s core features, while on the other; they have nothing new to offer in their so called desktop clientsand web user interface. TweetDeck was acquired by Twitter on May 2011 for $40 Billion and the Adobe AIR app has not been updated ever since.

Google Buzz has closed shop but the Adobe AIR app is crying for an update.

Both apps hog down system memory like anything but at the end of the day, I will be sticking to the Adobe AIR app. Unless they kill it already.

Everyone’s favorite micro-blogging  based social network, Twitter, is apparently in the final days of their old interface design. If you happen to be using #oldTwitter, then you have probably seen the warning below, which tells you that it will be ending ‘very, very soon.’

It appears that Twitter is getting ready to push all of its users to its new interface design, which it calls #newTwitter. Most of the Twitter user base has been using New Twitter for almost a year without much trouble. However, there are a loyal few who are outraged by Twitter’s attempt to push them into using the new design.

As you can see from the Tweets in the screen capture above, these Old Twitter loyalists are pretty dedicated. The question now is whether or not they will actually do anything in response to the switch. I find it hard to believe that any of them will leave Twitter because of the switch.

The transition to New Twitter doesn’t bother me. I have been using various Twitter clients for so long that I didn’t even know there was a #newTwitter until months after its release. I find that managing my accounts and lists in TweetDeck better suites my personal use.

What are your thoughts on #newTwitter? Are you a die hard fan of #oldTwitter? Are you like me, and use a  separate  Twitter client? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

It makes perfect sense.

The most popular and widely growing micro-blogging site acquiring the most popular desktop client for Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, LinkedIn and MySpace. The deal was closed at $40 Million which is somewhat lesser than the expected amount of $50 Million as reported earlier. Though Twitter has denied to comment whether they have actually acquired TweetDeck, multiple sources confirm the acquisition.

Back in February, there were some rumors that UberMedia might acquire TweetDeck. The rumors fell like a deck of cards when Twitter blocked UberMedia’s application fearing that UberMedia might rival Twitter in the long run by creating their own social micro blogging site. It turns out that UberMedia’s deal was cut out during mid April which opened doors for TweetDeck to respond to the offer made by Twitter.

With the rising popularity of TweetDeck across multiple platforms, it was long coming.

You build a startup, it takes a different turn than what it was intended for. Fair enough, then you allow third party developers to build apps around your service so that more users can engage from a variety of sources e.g Android, desktop, iOS and so on.

Then comes the real boom.

Suddenly, you have the feeling that these third party apps are getting more popular than your actual product and less people are actually knocking your door and converting to business.

When it comes to monetization, Twitter has been a slow learner. In fact, this is the only widespread Internet company which has not implemented bold monetization methods so far. There are promoted tweets, promoted users which is the only way for Twitter to earn revenue, but they are not obtrusive. Twitter wants to play clean and maintain a good user experience, but here is a small catch.

If you want your real shop to be the center of attraction, you have to limit the outlets. Sure outlets spread your branding, get the word about your business and brings more goodwill but if their own roots become parallel to yours, you have to do something about it. Which may be one of the reason why Twitter changed their API Tos and limited the ever expanding growth of third party Twitter Apps.

Now talking of apps, the dark horse might be the TweetDeck app for Chrome. Acer and Samsung are launching Chromebooks from June 15th, remember?

Though Twitter has denied to comment on the  rumors of acquiring TweetDeck  but someone did revoked my access token for TweetDeck this morning.

Back in February, there were some rumors that UberMedia might acquire TweetDeck, the popular Twitter client for desktop, iPhone, Android and Google Chrome.

It looks like that acquisition bid failed and put TweetDeck up on the market again. However, they might not stay there for longer though as WSJ is reporting that Twitter is in advanced talks to purchase TweetDeck for around $50 million.

In the recent past, TweetDeck had purchased Tweetie for iPhone to expand their presence on the iPhone and have also released apps for iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7.

The acquisition of TweetDeck might give Twitter an advantage in the Windows segment as it is the only platform that they don’t have a dedicated app for. Twitter creates and distributes it’s own Mac app.

Twitter has been receiving a lot of flak recently for it’s recent changes in their API ToS, where it basically asked new developers to stop developing apps for Twitter. This acquisition move might be a part of their recent change in mentality. Acquiring TweetDeck would give them a huge chunk of Windows users which TweetDeck has. It would also make them the largest app for Windows, effectively giving them an advantage over other Windows based Twitter client.

It will be interesting to see how this develops and whether it affects other Twitter app developers or not. Another important thing is that TweetDeck is also working on a web interface which will rival Twitter’s own web interface. So, will Twitter kill it once they acquire TweetDeck? Only time will tell.

If you are a developer take this news with a pinch of salt, after all building a business around Twitter was probably not the wisest decision. I have learnt this the hard way and chronicled my experience in the post; Building A Business Around Someone Else’s Could Mean Disaster, do read it.

About TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a multi-purpose client which allows users to track their Twitter timeline, replies and direct messages along with providing a powerful interface to track brands and websites, and also follow Twitter trends and searches. Along with Twitter, TweetDeck also supports pulling feeds from other popular services such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

In recent months, TweetDeck has launched a Chrome App which allowed users to access TweetDeck from within Google Chrome and also a new web interface for TweetDeck aimed at users of modern browsers.

TweetDeck is one of my favorite desktop clients for accessing Twitter and Facebook feeds among other social networking platforms. They also have clients for the Android, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. However, the one that impressed me the most was their Chrome App for Google Chrome.

The TweetDeck Chrome App brought all the goodies from the desktop app to the browser. Today, TweetDeck has announced that they will now be allowing users to access TweetDeck on any web browser using a HTML5 web app.

As we said at the time, Chrome TweetDeck marks the start of a new era for TweetDeck, with all efforts now focused on building our next-generation products as HTML5 and mobile apps. Since then we have been working hard, not only on improving the existing ChromeDeck experience, but also on bringing the same TweetDeck app to other web platforms.

TweetDeck Web will be available in a limited web beta for users which will be available as a standalone web site and does not require any downloads. However, TweetDeck Web beta will be subject to hourly limits because it will not be using the streaming API from Twitter.

TweetDeck Web will initially be opened up as private beta and users can sign up to get early access at http://www.tweetdeck.com/webbeta. The initial focus group would be users of browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox 3.6, Firefox 4 and Safari, with support for Opera and Internet Explorer 9 being added soon

Though TweetDeck is taking a great step forward by taking their platform online, they are not the first one’s to provide a web-based format and several other services like Seesmic, Dabr and HootSuite already provide web based Twitter clients.

However, TweetDeck chrome already notched up an impressive 400,000 users in a short spam of time. It would be interesting to see how much dent they make into the market share of other services by launching the web interface for different browsers.

UberMedia, the company that brought you UberTwitter, Echofon and Twidroyd for the Blackberry, iOS and Android mobile platforms is now the proud owner of TweetDeck, the de facto Twitter client for Windows.

If you have not heard of UberMedia earlier, now would be the time to know that,

UberMedia was founded in early 2010 as TweetUp (later PostUp) by Internet entrepreneur, Bill Gross, in an effort to provide Twitter users with a way to find the world’s best Tweeters on topics of particular interest and at the same time enable Tweeters to increase their following among people keen to hear what they have to say.

Being a company based totally on the social-media ecosystem is not an easy job. One has to keep innovating because users prefer a service only so long as it remains the best of the lot. There is a drive urge to deliver and excel in all three mobile platforms that has taken UberMedia to the next level. For example, UberMedia was the first to develop an app that brought live preview of links and media in tweets. This prevented the application from navigating away to launch a browser.

This company is not all about talking big and missing in action. They describe their feedback policy as,

We’re always open to new ideas and would love to get your feedback. Each of our apps has a suggestion button that provides a direct message back to our development team. Our Support and Contact Us pages also include links, and we read everything people write to us about. So let us know what you think, and of course, enjoy our apps and the UberMarket.

Bill Gross holds some of the biggest name in the Twitter app world and the acquisition of TweetDeck will definitely be a relevant and valuable addition to his company’s inventory of apps. The deal valued in the $25 $30 million range is the largest deal ever for UberMedia, given that TweetDeck is the largest Twitter client.

Looks like TweetDeck is in good hands and we can expect it to keep growing under UberMedia.

Welcome to our third edition of the Best Mobile Apps Of The Week. This week we would like to introduce our readers to a very popular Twitter app for the iOS as well as for Android.  Along with that, we would introduce our readers to a very popular VOIP client for Symbian.

Here are the featured mobile apps of the week for iOS, Symbian and Android:

Twitter (iOS)

Twitter for iPhone/iPad  is the official twitter client from the company itself Twitter. The app has a very slick UI and I especially love the sliding panels’ UI feature in Twitter for iPad. The app also supports push notifications and inline media display. I have been using Twitter for iPad right on my iPad since the day it was launched. The app literally blows the competition away!

iOS owners can download Twitter For iPad/iPhone from the App Store for free.

Skype (Symbian)

Skype is one of the most popular VOIP services out there. The company also has an official Skype client for all the major mobile OS including Symbian. Skype for Symbian allows users to make free calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world for free via Wi-Fi or 3G. It also allows Skype owners to chat for free.

The company recently rolled out an updated version of Skype which supports the latest generation of Symbian phones like the Nokia N8, C7 and E5. The update also added SILK’ Skype’s own audio codec which helps improves voice quality on a low-bandwidth connection. Symbian owners can download Skype for their handset for free from here.

TweetDeck (Android)

TweetDeck is one of the most popular third party Twitter client for Windows. The app is also available for other major mobile platforms including Android. The Android version of TweetDeck has a great looking UI and functions really well. I personally switched to TweetDeck and have been using it ever since on my Galaxy S since the day it was released.

The application also supports other major social networking sites like Facebook, Google Buzz and Foursquare. The application however does lack some features like no support for creating lists, no auto-fill while entering @username and some totally useless widgets. However, I am pretty sure the folks behind TweetDeck for Android will fix all these issues sooner than later. Android owners can download TweetDeck for free from the Android Market.

When Google announced their Chrome OS netbook and web store earlier today for Google Chrome, my initial thoughts were that I would definitely miss a lot of desktop apps, like Windows Live Writer and TweetDeck.

However, I guess my worries have disappeared now after I started using the TweetDeck app for Google Chrome. If you have already used TweetDeck on the desktop or on the iPhone or Android based device, you will see a very familiar UI with the Chrome App. The app allows you to add multiple accounts, follow lists and more among other things.

The app also has smooth scrolling within columns so that you can view updates you have missed. It is almost similar to the desktop experience you get. TweetDeck for Chrome also has almost all the features which you might find in the desktop app. TweetDeck for Chrome also imports all your settings from TweetDeck desktop to the web app making it easier to replicate your information.

TweetDeck is the perfect app that shows how much can be done within the browser and that living in the cloud is a really not going to be that bad after all. If you haven’t done it yet, go ahead and download the TweetDeck app for Chrome from here.

For those not in the know, TweetDeck is a social networking app for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace among other things. You can download the desktop version of TweetDeck from here.

TweetDeck has announced the final version of the popular Twitter and Social Media client, TweetDeck 1.0 for Android. Users can download TweetDeck 1.0 from Android Market.

Over the past two months, TweetDeck, the popular desktop and iPhone client have released several beta versions. Today they have finally perfected the version and released TweetDeck 1.0 for Android. Users can download TweetDeck 1.0 by searching for it in the Android Market.

Also Read: Best Tips, Tricks and Use Cases for Using TweetDeck

The folks behind TweetDeck have just updated the beta version of TweetDeck for Android. This new beta update brings with it a trio of widgets and a new Add Column interface. Along with this, the beta also fixes the various bugs found in the previous beta and aims at improving the performance of the application.

The three new widgets include TweetDeck Bar, TweetDeck Column and TweetDeck post. The TweetDeck Bar widget contains shortcuts to all your columns. The TweetDeck column shows the recent tweets of the column you select. However, according to me this widget has a very odd size. It needs to be a bit bigger. The TweetDeck Post widget allows you to quickly compose and tweet new messages.

I have been using TweetDeck right from the time the first beta rolled out. The application is downright impressive with a very pleasing UI. However, it still lacks a very important feature and that is the number of tweets to load.

Here is the link to download TweetDeck Beta for Android.