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.

I arrived at Laid Off Camp NY yesterday morning bright and early, eager to give my session on Networking 101. However, after I put my session topic on the board, a few people asked me if I was going to do a session on Twitter. So I decided to do an extra session on Twitter. In the spirit of Laid Off Camp I am going to post my session notes here.

So Twitter…What is it? What’s it all About? (shameless show plug)

Most of the people in my session yesterday knew what Twitter was, but they were having a hard time finding value, or an effective way to use it.

Of course I got asked the now age-old question: Isn’t twitter just like facebook status updates? Why do I need twitter when I have facebook?

Twitter IS NOT the Same As Facebook Status Updates

Let’s start with some simple twitter terms:

Followers = the number of people who have chosen to receive your updates in their twitter stream

Following = the number of people who’s updates you would like to receive.

Unlike most other social networks, because twitter does not work on a ‘friends’ model (which requires that you accept someones ‘friend request’ before you can communicate with that person), someone on twitter can be following you and you are in no way obligated to follow that person back.

Twitter has been categorized as a ‘micro-blog’ which give the misconception that someones twitter stream can be read like a blog, from top to bottom. Chances are if you were to try and read someone’s twitter stream like that you would become very quickly confused because the stream would simply not make sense.

You would come across updates like

All you see is a lot of @’s and #, it can look like a foreign language sometimes.

@ replies = when you see and @ followed by a twitter username, that tweet is a response to another tweet. This is how you have conversations on twitter.

# hashtags = when you see # followed by a word or acronym, it is called a hashtag. Go to search.twitter.com and type in the hashtag to see what all the fuss is about. (some twitter clients turn these hashtags into twitter search links already but twitter.com does not as of yet)

Passively reading twitter is not a great way to get started using it. I suggest you start following people who you find interesting. Do not start following only celebrities, because to be honest, they don’t really know how to engage in conversation on twitter. Check out WeFollow.com, it’s a twitter directory. You can add yourself and search for people based on tags. It’s a good place to get started.

The next thing I recommend is turning on SMS with twitter. (only do this is you have unlimited text messaging, and if you don’t have unlimited text messaging, get unlimited text messaging)

I know a lot of people who only really use twitter via SMS and it works great. It’s fast and easy.

I recommend testing out some twitter clients for your computer. Some people might disagree with me on this one, but I feel like if you really want to start using twitter you need to put some filters in place. There are a TON of twitter clients to choose from but I recommend trying tweetdeck or tweetie.

One thing a heard a lot yesterday was people that had signed up for twitter, looked at it for a few days, and never touched it again.

I say, give twitter 30 days. Really make and effort to use some tools, and engage in the conversation. You won’t be sorry.

If you have more twitter questions, or I am missing something that I talked about yesterday, please leave it in the comments and let’s continue the discussion.