A Series Of New TweetDeck Features, Will Become A Paid Application

Some of the addition of new features in tweetdeck is expected to satisfy its users. (photo: screenshot)

JAKARTA - Remember TweetDeck? Yes, starting today Twitter will start testing a new set of features for the platform. The company plans to turn TweetDeck into a subscription service.

Previously Tweetdeck was deliberately designed for professionals from Twitter users. However, the company's social media is often overlooked. Twitter's head of product, Kayvon Beykpour, said the update includes a more complete tweet composer, new advanced search features, new column types, and a new way to group columns into a neater workspace.

Beykpour explained, a new tweet composer that will allow to add GIFs, polls or emojis to tweets. The new tweet composer can also manage tweets so they can be uploaded on a desired schedule, not just for photos or videos, as before. Users can also write threads and tag images.

For column selection, users can access new column types including Profile, Topic, Explore, Events, Moments, and Bookmarks. However, to present this type of column, several other columns were removed, such as Activity, Followers, Likes, and Outbox. Then for the new advanced search feature, it will allow users to choose between seeing the latest or top tweets in the first column.

I've been using the new TweetDeck preview for 9 months. If you're a longtime user and thrown off by the image below, rest assured you can customize your columns to look and behave very much like the version you know and love. For example, here's mine: pic.twitter.com/i9bT1Mkfr8 https://t.co/16dHgdVXAQ

— Eric Zuckerman (@EricZuck) July 20, 2021

Interestingly, there is one new addition to TweetDeck that seems smarter, namely the Deck feature. This allows users to manage a collection of columns into separate workspaces. Decks can help users who want to create multiple workspaces, which can adapt to a specific theme from a collection of columns.

Despite the benefits that some changes can bring, unfortunately there has also been a less positive response from testers who have gained access to the new TweetDeck.

Many users have complained about missing the Activity option in the column. Whereas the Activity option can show user activity, such as favorite tweets or following other users. In addition, complaints were also given on the loss of Outbox in the column selection.

One user also said and proved in a screenshot of his upload on Twitter, that TweetDeck is just like Twitter in general, only with more column views.

Worse, Twitter's own post about an update on TweetDeck, shows wide column dimensions and very large photo images, which can take up too much space. This would certainly be the kind of change that would ruin the information-heavy reading experience, which most TweetDeck users prefer.

Furthermore, a Twitter engineer, Angelo Tomasco, clarified that the changes are not just about making TweetDeck more like Twitter. This change was made to provide an update infrastructure in TweetDeck to catch up with Twitter. Thus, TweetDeck developers can freely build new features by responding to feedback from users.

The company also said that the TweetDeck that came to be tested was not the final version. These changes will be available to a small, randomly selected group of people in the United States (US), Canada, and Australia to begin testing TweetDeck changes.

However, Twitter is not turning a deaf ear and will be listening and responding to user feedback about the changes. This is really necessary if Twitter plans to make TweetDeck a subscription service. Thus quoted from TechCrunch, Thursday, July 22.