Wow, Christmas came early. I got New Twitter within 48 hours of it coming out. I did a little dance. Just a little one. Because I was skeptical about it.
For me, Twitter is nothing without HootSuite. All the data streaming down like a waterfall. Like something out of The Matrix. All you have to do is filter it to your liking. And to me, there’s no better way to parse, segment, combine and monitor the conversation than with HootSuite.
But a few friends who got it first and whose opinion I trust say that new Twitter is a wonderful experience. One even went so far as to say it’s the best way to view Twitter.
So I had to give it a go.
Why I like New Twitter
There are a couple things that New Twitter does that HootSuite doesn’t do. And, “no,” “suck,” isn’t one of them.
The first reports on new Twitter undersold how the embeddable content was going to enhance the experience. With the two panel approach, Twitter shows a multi-tiered cross section of information on each tweet you select. You can see the conversation thread (like in HootSuite) but new Twitter takes it a step farther, offering the bio of the other person in the tweet as well as the recent history of hashtags or @ mentions in the tweet.
Not only that, but if there’s a geotag link in the tweet – such as from foursquare, new Twitter will give you information on tweets in that area.
All the information shows up on the right side panel when you highlight a tweet. And comes with a scroll bar so you can parse through the data.
Why New Twitter Still Doesn’t Seem to Understand
And here’s where the face-palm comes in…
Up top on the left hand column they let you go through the data as it applies to you:
- Timeline
- Mentions
- ReTweets (which they still don’t get right)
- Searches
- Lists
And the let you save searches. And if you hunt and peck around you can find the following, followers, and the favorites. BUT…
You can only read one list at a time.
All the possible conversations one can follow. All the hashtags, all the threads, all the lists, and Twitter still only allows you to read them one at a time.
As opposed to HootSuite (and TweetDeck), that offers 10 columns of data at a time. And multiple account support. And enterprise level support – in the case of at least HootSuite – that will allow for multiple accounts to use one Twitter profile and notify users which account replied to which Tweet.
I’ll play around with New Twitter more and enjoy the way in which their display data from a selected tweet. But there’s simply too many conversations to watch to be forced to go one list at a time. And if you are like me and run multiple accounts for businesses and organizations, then Twitter is a Greek Hell: an eyelash out of reach of perfection.
     | do some of that social network stuff. |
