I’ve been using Twitter for close to four years and love the service for my constant stream of news and ongoing updates and day to day networking. I started by using the site itself but quickly moved on to Tweetdeck and the mobile versions of the site. As somebody who works in the social media industry and who used Twitter a lot for work I used Tweetdeck for everything from personal use to monitoring multiple clients and posting updates from the various accounts I would manage. It was a happy relationship with the app doing everything I wanted. That was all great until Twitter decided that they wanted to control the eco-system of apps around the service and bought Tweetdeck for $50 odd million last year. They sat on it for six months before releasing their own version which is quite easily the biggest load of crap I have ever used and changes the experience completely from what it used to be when I fired up my desktop Tweetdeck app. It is so bad now that I have pretty much stopped using Twitter in the last week and now only read other people’s tweets instead of posting my own. I loved sharing links and posting valuable content but the whole new Tweetdeck experience is just so painful that it pains me to post any sort of update.

I can hear you screaming that there are lots of other apps out there that I could be using. Even the new Twitter web page isn’t that bad but the simple fact is that I have been stuck in my ways after using Tweetdeck for over 3 years. 3 years is a long time and although there are other services out there it means a learning curve and that is something I don’t have time for. Twitter have taken something that was brilliant and completely messed it up. The new Tweetdeck is clearly aimed at a more mass market audience and that is fair enough but alienating the people who used it religiously is a stupid move. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

People being up in arms about social media services changing their look and feel is nothing new. The world is not going to stop because I don’t like the new Tweetdeck but from what I am seeing I am not alone in thinking this. Acquiring Tweetdeck should have been a positive move and Twitter should have kept the service as it was and added on improved features like analytics and improved settings. Instead they have ripped the heart out of it and made it unusable. I’ll probably end my grump about it soon and go and try something like Hootsuite or Seesmic but for the next while I’m barely posting any content in to Twitter because I can’t be bothered. Twitter messed up bad here and I can only pray that they come to their senses and bring the old Tweetdeck back. I won’t hold my breath.