We're back to Twitter today, and so far we've talked about the what/why, the how, the who and today we're going to talk a bit about some of the ways to start enhancing the experience! Many people who use twitter simply log in at http://twitter.com/ and work from there. But there are many (like 100s) of applications that have been designed to work with twitter to make your twitter experience even better.

There are many reasons to use some of the different clients and today we're going to talk about two of the more popular ones that people use, and why. I've asked Amy to help me out with Tweetdeck information since I only use one of the two we're going to be talking about.

Tweetdeck

Here are Amy's thoughts on using Tweetdeck.

I use Tweetdeck on my laptop, my iPhone and our iPad and there are a few reasons that I’ve stuck with it:

It automatically refreshes, unlike the Twitter home page (the thing that bothers me most about the Twitter home page)
You can mark tweets as read, allowing you to keep your stream under control
You can create columns for different users or hashtags which helps to keep track of the things that are important to you
You can tweet pictures right in Tweetdeck
It shortens links automatically to save characters (and if you hover over shortened links it shows you a preview of what the long link is, which helps avoid nasty links).
They’ve recently added a feature to the desktop that helps auto-complete user names (just in case you can’t remember if someone has an underscore in their user name, for example) – in the iPhone and iPad versions you can search the people you follow if you can’t remember exactly how someone spells their user name, though I find it’s a bit buggy)
You can sign up for a tweetdeck account and sync your columns across multiple devices.

Here is the rundown on what I use and why.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is web based so you can log in to it from wherever you are without having to bring your own computer with you.
You can have multiple columns and tabs to manage multiple twitter accounts as well as multiple views of each account (@replies, direct messages, hashtags, scheduled tweets)
You can schedule tweets! This is key for Kids in the Capital and some of my other blogs and a great way to make sure your important messages are getting out even when you aren't online. Do you have a great blog post you want to make sure all your friends see but you know you won't be online at 9pm tonight when most of them are? Schedule it!
You can have multiple users on one account (although this is now a paid feature). This means that people can share the responsibility on a twitter account, something that has come in very useful for Kids in the Capital and my other blog Losing it in Ottawa. You can even assign tweets to people, letting them know they're responsible for dealing with a specific issue. And when a different team member replies, you can tell the tweet has already been replied to and you can click to see what the response was.
You can shorten long URLs right in the program
You can tweet photos right from the software, although I've never done this and I don't know why.

There are many many more clients to choose from: Seesmic, Twitterfall and Cotweet are some. Plus, there are tons that have been developed for mobile phones, such as Echofon, and Uber Twitter. Oh! And I didn't even mention a lot of these programs allow you to manage your facebook and email and other social media from the same platform too (although I don't do that - do any of you?)

I ask that my tech savvy friends that are already using some of these other clients please share the whats/whys here in the comments, we'd love to hear. And for those of you still using the web, have you tried any of the others? If you haven't do any of these features temp you?

Let's discuss! And in the future there is a lot more to talk about - like twtvite and twitpic. Oh, the fun never ends with twitter I tell you! :)

Lara is mom to 4 year old Kiernan and 1 year old twins Quinn and Juliette. You can read her blog at Gliding Through Motherhood.