PR and the Social Web

I have been pretty resolutely old skool about Twitter, choosing to use the web as my application of choice. That was up until today when I decided to check out Tweetdeck.  It’s a desktop application developed in the UK by Iain Dodsworth and launched in June 08.  It has also just raised almost $1/2 million in funding to allow Ian the time to develop it, so expect it to get better and better.  

Tweetdeck allows you to tackle the issue that every Twitter user encounters when they get to follow about fifty or more people (Ian reckons his problem kicked in at the thirty mark), the issue of too much noise.  It provides a set of columns that allow you to organise your twitter information streams.  You still have a column for everyone you follow but you can set up columns of selected followers or columns based around search terms that you select.  

There is also a Twitscoop word cloud that allows you to track ‘trending terms’. This Sunday morning I watched ‘hangover’ trending highly in the morning to be edged out by ‘church’ as the day progressed.  For us PR people it provides a neat adition to the tools we can use to track the twitterverse and the conversations that are taking place, which might particularly interest us.

There is also an audio alert for new tweets or, and this is my preference, a discreet notification window which is gently nudging me as I type this blog.

Oh, and the default colour scheme, which you could alter if you wished, is black and cool.