There are a ton of ways to access Twitter these days and many of the solutions offer advanced ways of organizing the tweets in a logical way. I have been a fan of TweetDeck for quite a while but I always found it a pain to set it up on each computer I use. I have an office PC, a laptop, a home desktop and sometimes I work on my wife’s laptop if it is the handier of the computers in the house. Having to install Adobe Air, then TweetDeck and then configure TweetDeck like I am used to using it can be a real pain. Then there are other times when I have to re-do it because like a lot of techies, I format and reinstall quite often.
Most recently, while Tweeting about I heard of an alpha release of PeopleBrowsr.com. This is a website that is quite similar to TweetDeck in layout and features, but like most websites I don’t have to worry about configuration when I move to another computer. I think it comes down to the same reason that I use Google’s hosted e-mail; no matter where I am, I always have access to it and the configuration remains the same.
Knowing how to get somewhere and do something in a software that is meant to increase efficiency is the key to its success. The only reason that TweetDeck worked for me is because I invested the time in setting it up exactly the same on every computer I use. If not for that, TweetDeck wouldn’t have been as effective.
On the other side of the coin, if I were a person who was always on the same computer then I wouldn’t have made the switch. Other than the accessibility of the product, I don’t use many of the extra features. I am able to connect to other services such as FriendFeed but I actually prefer to login to the FriendFeed website and use their interface. The same reasons why PeopleBrowsr.com is a great access point for Twitter don’t apply to FriendFeed.
So a heads up for those of you who find yourself at more than one computer in a day. To be able to instantly jump into the Twitterverse as soon as you sit down, even for the first time at any computer is an awesome thing.
Note that this is still an alpha version and is prone to bugs. I haven’t found anything that is stopping me from using it in the last week. It is also only compatible with Firefox and Safari at this point.
