ChromeDeck: TweetDeck Finally Comes To The Web As A Chrome App
You can get TweetDeck, the popular realtime stream reader, as a desktop client, on your iPhone and iPad, or Android phone. But up until now, there was no Web browser version (unlike Seesmic, which is best known as a browser-based app).
Context & Ripple Effects
TweetDeck has spent 2010 filling out its client roster: after its Android arrival in August closed out a beta that drew 36,427 active testers, the company now covers desktop, iPhone, iPad and Android. What it has lacked is a browser version — the one surface where rival Seesmic is best known to live.
Shipping as a Chrome app closes that gap without asking users to install anything, and it lands just as Google is building out Chrome's app platform as a distribution channel of its own. For a realtime reader whose value is being everywhere the user is, the browser was the last major hole.
First-order effects
- Seesmic's clearest differentiator — being browser-based while TweetDeck required a download — disappears today, forcing its comparison against TweetDeck on feature parity rather than delivery format.
- TweetDesk users on locked-down machines or shared computers gain access for the first time, widening the funnel beyond people willing to install a desktop client.
Second-order effects
- A browser build gives TweetDeck one more surface to sync columns and accounts across, sharpening the cross-device continuity pitch against single-platform rivals.
- Google gets a marquee third-party name validating Chrome apps as a credible distribution channel for mainstream software, ammunition in its bid to make the browser an application platform.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, realtime dashboard clients converge toward browser-first architectures, with native apps retained mainly for push notifications and offline use rather than as the primary product.
- Third-party Twitter clients deepen their dependence on both the browser vendors' app platforms and Twitter's own API terms — a two-layer platform risk that neither TweetDeck nor Seesmic controls.
The trend: Realtime social readers are consolidating around the browser as their primary delivery surface, turning native clients into complements rather than the product itself.