Ever since TweetDeck launched their app for Google Chrome, I’ve been using it to manage Twitter and to keep an eye of Facebook notifications without logging in to the social network. Despite fears that it will be discontinued after the acquisition by Twitter, the apps under the TweetDeck brand continue to thrive and add features. The latest addition to the Chrome app is scheduling of updates, arrived with version 0.9.8. The status field added a simple new button with a clock icon, which enables the controls for date and time. Like any other status update from TweetDeck you can add your location, links and select several social networks to update simultaneously. There is even a new ‘Scheduled’ column that you can add from the big ‘TweetDeck’ menu to track the scheduled updates.
At first I was pretty excited by the feature; it looked like the perfect opportunity to replace HootSuite, which I only use for scheduling some tweets and Facebook status updates nowadays. Unfortunately, TweetDeck’s solution has the same usability problems as HootSuite: the app doesn’t remember the last used settings and instead defaults every time to the current date/time and deselects the previously used social networks; and a different one on top: setting the time for the post can only be done by clicking on the arrows next to the two fields for hour and minute; you cannot enter the numbers directly from the keyboard or use the keyboard arrows to set the time. This makes scheduling through TweetDeck even more tedious that in HootSuite. Let’s hope they will revisit the setup soon, because in this form it’s barely usable.
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