This week Tweetdeck finally announced Tweetdeck for iPhone, and the internet went crazy. I was seeing tons of tweets about how awesome it was, and how many people were switching from Tweetie to Tweetdeck.

If you haven’t had a chance to take a look, here are the listed features. I have marked in bold the features that are unique to Tweetdeck:

• Tweet directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch.
• Manage multiple Twitter accounts.
• View notifications for new tweets received.
• Use columns to create your personal dashboard.
• Simply sync to set-up
• Continuously updates between your desktop and iPhone.
• Create Groups to easily follow all your friends.
• Follow topics in real-time with saved searches.
• Reply to tweets and send direct messages.
• Easily re-tweet messages.
• Share photos with Twitpic and YFrog.
• Shorten links with your favourite URL shortener.
• Follow and un-follow people.
• Shake your iPhone to refresh columns.

So of course I did what everyone else did and downloaded the app (it was free) but within the first few seconds of using it I noticed a huge missing feature. Go to User! I wanted the ability to type in someones username and see their tweets, followers, and be able to DM them. Within Tweetie this was a snap. You simply click the ‘more’ tab, and click ‘go to user’, then just type in the persons twitter handle and you are good to go.

This feature is especially helpful when you want to DM or @reply someone who you had not recently had a conversation with. In tweetdeck the only way to get to a userscreen is to click on that person’s tweet. So they would have had to have recently tweeted in order for you to find them. Well what if they haven’t tweeted in days, then what are you supposed to do?

Here is an example of what a user’s profile page will look like in Tweetdeck and then Tweetie.

I understand the usefulness of having columns, of having it sync with your desktop app, and putting people into groups. But without the basic feature so search through users, I cannot use Tweetdeck. So until that changes, it’s Tweetie all the way.

So today I went to my local Apple store with my friend Rosie because her iPhone had gotten the white screen of death and we needed to get it replaced. While hanging out we started talking about Twitter. I was very interested to hear about her experiences with twitter. She has had an account for a while but only started using it regularly this May. She said she started twittering during finals week because she just wanted to tell everyone everything and then she remembered that she could do that with twitter.

She told me that she felt like she didn’t think she was really using it correctly. I told her that there really isn’t a “correct” way to use twitter, but I was curious as to what made her think that.

She had some really interesting insights about how she uses twitter and ways she would like to see it be improved. These were things that I had not really heard from a lot of users or really from the general tech community so I thought I would share them with you all.

The first thing that she felt was missing was a facebook type of “wall-to-wall” view, for your conversations back and forth with one person. I know that there are some apps that do this but Rosie mainly uses the main twitter web page when she is at a computer and twitterific on her iPhone. She would like these features to be built into the main twitter site.
However you can use search.twitter.com/advanced to search for conversations between specific people.

She also was really wishing that she could see her list of followers/following in alphabetical order. This was something I never felt the need for but I was really wondering if other people might find this helpful as well.

Rosie also became frustrated that she could not just DM anyone. She wants to be able to have a private conversation with anyone, no matter who is following who. She said that it was kind of strange that you might be able to have a one-way DM conversation if you were DM-ing one of your followers who then could not DM you back because you were not following them.

Her last insight was that she felt that the interface and general feel of twitter was a little childish. She couldn’t really explain why she felt that way, but I thought it was interesting none the less.

If you want to follow her she is @rosesness on twitter.

I would love to hear your thoughts on her thoughts.

In today’s video my friend calls me out on trying to not put up a video today! Enjoy

(p.s. if you are reading this in a feed and you can’t see the video please click through)