The End of an Era: Tweetdeck Going Silent on May 7th

In a frustrating and maddening move, Twitter has announced the end of Tweetdeck.

For me, Tweetdeck was an incredibly valuable resource.  One desktop app that allowed me to do both Twitter and Facebook.  The columns were fantastic as I could have different ones for my feed, mentions, new followers, custom searches, lists – you name it.  Everything I needed right there in a single interface.  What’s not to love?

Well, if you’re Twitter – lots.

Though not (yet) as bad as Facebook, Twitter thinks they know how we should experience Twitter.  The tools they produce should be the ones we use.  When we don’t, they get a little perturbed.  For example, they want you to go to the website.  I hate the website.  And not only because it’s constantly freezing or getting overwhelmed by users.

I kinda saw this coming but have resisted the urge to completely panic until now.  See, Twitter bought Tweetdeck a while ago and promptly fucked it up with ‘updates’ and ‘features’ that actually nerfed it worse than a Blizzard patch on Tuesday turned your bad-ass DPS powerhouse Mage into a walking whiffle ball of fluffy suckiness.  I refused to do the updates, keeping my tried and true version of Tweetdeck.  Soon, that version stopped working on my iPhone, and the desktop app has had some issues, but still trudged along.  Until last week.

I noticed the little blurb along the top bar telling me Tweetdeck would stop working on May 7th.  Next thing I noticed was that I couldn’t retweet anything any more.  And forget about uploading images.  It seemed they weren’t messing around any more.  Tweetdeck was on a slow road to death.

With few alternatives left to me, I shut down my Tweetdeck and looked for something to replace it.  I won’t use the Twitter desktop app – I hate it.  (If you work at Twitter, please take note – your desktop client is a piece of shit.)  I want a desktop client.  Browsers don’t work for me.  A search for ‘twitter’ ‘tweetdeck’ ‘columns’ and ‘alternative’ brought up Janetter.  I have it installed and so far, so good.

But I miss my Tweetdeck already.

~P