Twitter Chat Horse Race: Which Tool Kicks Apps?

I wrote a post for the Social Fluency blog yesterday that relates my recent experience in participating in a 
Twitter chat.

I used several programs simultaneously to keep up with the flow of the dialog.  Here is an excerpt, please visit the link above to read the entire post.

After studying the advice in the Handshake 2.0 post in detail, I readied the apps for the upcoming chat. TweetDeck was easy – just add a search column with the appropriate hashtag. TweetChat, a Web-based tool, required no client side app or plug-in and was also very simple to sign up for. HootSuite, also a Web app, has a rich interface that lets you set up a page for monitoring a chat, with separate columns in which you can follow each participant.

Twitter is very democratic in that it treats each tweet the same.  The disadvantage is that it can be hard to follow the flow of a discussion.  Replies contain no reference to the original post, apart from the originating user’s Twitter name (for a new micro blogging platform that excels at organizing conversations, see FriedEggs). So, I thought HootSuite could solve this problem by grouping Tweets from the same user into different columns.

TweetDeck, the one client-side app I used, had the advantage of a pop-up window that surfaces relevant tweets as they occur.

The clock ticked inexorably toward 9pm, when the chat was supposed to start.  As I got ready to jump in, I was of course very focused on the subject matter, and keen to participate and learn.  But the geek and PR guy in me wondered. which app would win the “horse race.”

Although all apps had their advantages – between tweets I was able to switch among them – I found TweetChat to be quickest in posting updates.  Also, it automatically added the hashtag to every Tweet (the most common mistake with Twitter chats is to leave out the hashtag, according to Kelly’s advice).

Although in other aspects, it has fewer bells and whistles, TweetChat is obviously purpose-built for Twitter chats, and I found that it worked the best.

Comments

[Z. Kelly Queijo]

Bob, I agree with your review of these tools. Tweetchat is my tool of choice when using only one chat tool. A Twitter chat puts me in super-geek mode and I find I thrive best on using two monitors and multiple tabs, all of which are handy if you're the moderator or a super-twitter-chat-geek. Thanks again for participating in the first #CampusChat!

[rgeller]

Kelly, your forum was a great learning (and tweeting and blogging) experience for me, thanks again for inviting me, and for your comment.