Now that you've been spending some time on Twitter, figuring out how it all works, you're probably gathering more followers minute by minute. But even if you only have a few, if they're power-Twitterers, you may already be feeling a little overwhelmed trying to keep up with it all.

Enter TweetDeck. This terrific third-party application provides a way to organize your tweets based on several criteria, making it easier for you to follow along. Here's an example of how I've customized it for my own use. In addition to the default columns that show All Tweets, @Replies, and Direct Messages, I've created a couple of groups: FLX, which is an online writer's group I'm involved with (many of whom are on Twitter), and a Marketing group, which includes those people who tweet a lot about that topic.

Here are instructions for installing it and some basic tips for using it.

Installing TweetDeck

Go to the TweetDeck website. (www.tweetdeck.com)

Scroll down and click the Install button.

You'll be prompted to either Open the installer, which will run it immediately, or save it to your desktop. If you choose the latter, you'll have to go to that location and double-click on it to launch the installation process.

When the security warning appears, go ahead and click Install.

You'll also get a pop-up with a couple of options to add an icon to your desktop and to launch TweetDeck once the installation is complete. Check them both and click Continue.

The installation will complete and another window will pop up asking you to log in to provide your login credentials for your Twitter account.

Once you've signed in, the default TweetDeck window will open.

As you can see, you've got a column on the left that lists all the tweets in your timeline, one in the middle that shows your @replies, and one on the right with your direct messages.

Customizing the Interface

Before we start adding, removing, or moving columns, you may want to change the look of the window (many people find the white text on black background difficult to read).

Click the Settings button at the top right.

It's the button that looks like a wrench. When the Settings window opens, click on the Colors/Font tab. When you click on any of the color swatches, a box will pop up that lets you pick another color. You can play around with these settings and click Save to see how they look.

There's one other setting you may want to address before continuing. Since you've been working with TweetDeck, you may have noticed a little window popping up at the top-right of your screen alerting you to new posts in your different columns. That popup will appear on top of any window you're working on so you can be notified of new tweets even if you're not currently in TweetDeck. At the same time a little bird cheep will sound.

Clicking anywhere on the popup will bring TweetDeck to the front of your other windows and close the popup.

Some people love this feature because they want to know whenever a new tweet arrives, regardless of what they're doing. I find it quite intrusive so fortunately there's an option to disable it altogether.

Click the General tab.

Now you can check/uncheck whichever notification options you want. There's a separate item for All Tweets, which refers to your All Friends column. The reason you may want to turn that one off specifically, while still getting notifications for your other columns, is because All Friends will usually be the column that gets the most new tweets.

Features of the Interface

Now that you've got the interface working the way you want it, let's look at some of the elements on it. We'll start with the buttons at the top left.

Click the Tweet button.

It's the first one on the left. When you click it, a section opens at the top where you can enter new tweets. (There's a Setting on the General tab that lets you change the position so this area appears at the bottom of the window.)

Simply type in your tweet as normal and hit enter or click the button to the right of the text box. A couple of points:

• TweetDeck makes it easy for you to create a tiny URL in your tweet as I discussed in yesterday's post, Four Ways To Engage Your Tweeps. You can click the down arrow to the right of the Shorten URL box to select which tiny URL service you want to use (I use tinyurl). Then as you're typing your tweet, when you come to the place where you want to enter the link, put the long URL in the box and click the Shorten button. It will convert the URL and enter it in the tweet where your cursor currently appears.
• I'll cover the TwitPic and TweetShrink functions in a later post.
• If you're doing more reading than writing of Tweets for a while, you can close this section again by clicking the x button at the top right.

Next we'll look at organizing the columns.

In the All Friends column, click the x button at the top right.

You'll be asked if you really want to delete it; click the trash can icon. The All Friends column disappears and the other two columns move to the left.

To restore the All Friends column, click the second button in the top-left. The column returns at the right of the screen; note this is where all new columns are added.

You can move columns around by using the left and right arrows at the bottom of each one. Note that if you want to move a column more than one spot, you'll have to move your cursor to the new column location after each click. So, let's say you want to move the All Friends column back to the very left. Click the left arrow button below the All Friends column once.

Because the All Friends column is now in the middle, you'll need to move your cursor to the left arrow button in the middle column to move it. If you instead clicked on the left arrow button in the right column, you'd simply be moving the Direct Messages column back to the middle and the All Friends column would be on the right again. (I do this ALL the time...)

The fifth and six buttons in the row are for the Replies and Direct Messages columns respectively, so those are what you'd use to restore those columns if you deleted them for any reason.

Working with Tweets

Now that we've got the basics of the interface figured out, you're going to want to start doing some of the things you would do if you were on Twitter's own site. I've already shown you how to open the window to let you send a new tweet. But, if you want to do something with someone else's tweet, simply mouse over his/her picture. It will bring up several icons that let you reply to it, send the person a direct message, add it to your favorite page, and retweet it. The latter is a really nice addition because it will automatically add the RT @[username] preface to your tweet, something that Twitter itself can't do.

If you click on someone's name at the bottom of the tweet, that person's profile will open up in a column at the right. It will include their picture and profile info (e.g. bio, number of followers/followees, etc.) followed by their most recent tweets. You can also follow or unfollow a person from here and add his/her name to a group (more on groups below).

Creating and Managing Groups

There are a lot of other features in TweetDeck that I won't have a chance to cover here. So I'm going to focus on Groups for the moment, because that's one area people I know have had trouble figuring out.

Click the Group button.

It's the third button from the left. A window will open at the right of the screen that lists all the people you follow. Give the group a name and add a checkmark beside the people you want to add to that group.

Click the Save Group button.

A new column will open at the right of the window (you'll probably have to use the scrollbar at the bottom to see it).

As with any column, you can move this to wherever you want on the screen.

Hint: As you add new columns, you may not want to keep scrolling to see them all. You can maximize your TweetDeck window like any other application. Additionally, in the Settings box on the General tab there's an option that lets you create Narrow Columns. When I do both these things, this is what my window now looks like.

When you want to add or remove people from any group, simply click on its name at the top of the column and the window will open again with the list of your followers' names.

Another way to add a person to a group is to click the [+] sign beside his/her name at the bottom of a tweet s/he wrote. This is a good way to add a person to multiple groups at a time because a window will open listing all the ones you've created.

That's pretty much all you need to know about groups. And this also brings us to the end of Tweet Week, so next week I'll be covering other tech topics again. However, there is still a lot to learn about Twitter and other applications related to it. If you have any specific questions you'd like addressed, please send an e-mail to F1@TechForLuddites.com.

In the meantime, happy tweeting!

Posted in How To, Social Media, TweetDeck, Twitter