By Kent Beatty of Talent Media Group – Follow him @kentbeatty
This post was originally published at KentBeatty.com on June 18, 2009
TweetDeck has been my Twitter Control Center for several months and now with Version 0.26 it’s even more powerful:
Newest features:
- Manage Multiple Twitter Accounts – (for you split personality types)
- Sync and Backup – to keep your TweetDeck safe
- Spam button – use this to avoid twitter spam
- iPhone – take all your TweetDeck favorites, groups, columns etc. with you!
Other features:
- Columns -You can display one column or many columns. I typically keep 10 columns open.
- Groups – View your followers in specific groups, which have their own column.
- Notifications – shows you new updates from peeps you’re following, replies, DMs, or 1 of your groups or searches.
- Facebook – Update Facebook from TweetDeck
- Constant updating – you can adjust the frequency of of updates from “All Friends”, “@Mentions” and “DMs” – no need to manually refresh all the time
- Video – Record, share and watch video clips from within TweetDeck
- Photos – View photo thumbnails directly from TweetDeck
- Short URL – Shorten a URL without leaving tweetdeck!
- Searches – Do a search on your name and find out what others are saying about you on twitter. Find out about an event, an organization or a person by searching for a name, keyword or hashtag.
- Saved Searches – Follow topics real-time and save your searches
Visit the TweetDeck blog
Hashtags:
- Hashtag – like tags, just prefix a word with the hash symbol – #: #mac, #iphone or #fb, used to create “groupings” on twitter
- Hashtags.org – check out this site for real-time tracking of Hashtags: Trends, Tags, People, etc.
- Follow – @hashtags on Twitter on twitter
- Use – hashtags in your tweets by preceding your key words with the #, i.e. #socialmedia
- Hashtag Origin – Hashtags were popularized during the San Diego forest fires in 2007 when Nate Ritter used the hashtag "#sandiegofire" to identify his updates related to the disaster.
Twitter Fanatics – Check out Loic Le Meur’s Seesmic Desktop for twitter – it’s very good and competes directly with TweetDeck for your attention. Here’s a video of Loic on the New Seesmic Desktop 0.3 Release 
Resources: Twitter Cheat Sheet – a 2 page pdf
Twitter For The Tweeple – a 17 page pdf (Getting Started with Twitter)
Using Twitter for Business – a 15 page pdf by
John Jantsch Why You Should be on Twitter – a 33 page pdf by
Navin Kabra A True Beginner’s Guide to Getting The Most Out of Twitter – a 22 page pdf by Sarah J. Austin & Linden A. Mueller
The Twitter Power Guide – a 20 page pdf by Christopher S. Penn
Twitter Tuesday Handout – a 7 page pdf by Phil Johncock Using TweetDeck – a 5 page pdf (brief guide to TweetDeck)