TweetDeck Updated: Lists, Activity, Media and more
Today, we're releasing a new version of TweetDeck. This update introduces some great new features as well as a host of smaller improvements and bug fixes. Check out this video for a quick tour of the updates, and read on for more information.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is TweetDeck's first substantial feature release since Twitter bought the client in May 2011, and it lands ten months into a platform push that already took the product to the browser via the Chrome app and the TweetDeck Web Beta in spring 2011. Reviewers had long endorsed TweetDeck as their preferred full-featured Twitter client, so the update is the clearest signal yet of how Twitter intends to run its biggest third-party acquisition.
The pickup was broad for a client-app changelog — Mashable, CNET, The Verge, The Next Web, Lifehacker and others all covered the release on the day, reflecting how central multi-column clients were to the power-user experience in 2012.
First-order effects
- Power users gain lists, activity streams and media columns inside TweetDeck directly under Twitter's ownership, tightening the loop between the timeline and curation tools that previously lived across separate clients.
- Browser-based rival Seesmic — which TweetDeck's web app was already closing the gap with — now competes against an incumbent whose desktop, mobile and web clients ship new features on the platform owner's schedule.
Second-order effects
- Independent client developers building on Twitter's API find themselves competing with a first-party app backed by the platform itself, shifting the contest from feature parity toward niches Twitter leaves unserved.
- As Twitter folds its most-used client in-house, the company gains direct control over how heavy users see lists, activity and media — leverage over the surface area where API changes land hardest.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — platforms acquiring their leading clients and then shipping them as first-party products — the 2009–2012 generation of independent social clients consolidates into platform-owned software, with the API relationship turning from partnership into dependency.
- The update also sketches where client value migrates once timelines commoditize: curation surfaces like lists and activity feeds become the differentiation battleground between clients.
The trend: Social platforms are absorbing their most popular third-party clients through acquisition and shipping them as first-party products, converting an open client ecosystem into a controlled one.