As most hardcore Twitter users know, there is a very strong third party developer community that has built up around Twitter. Name your operating system and chances are you will find a dozen good desktop clients and a complete range of web mashup. At the top of the pile of desktop clients the heavy favorite would have to be TweetDeck .
Personally I have tried it but it never really grabbed me as a solid choice for a Twitter client. While it wasn’t the deciding factor the memory consumption of TweetDeck is pretty heavy. So heavy apparently that Terry Schadron at the New York Times sent out a memo to all the newsroom folks asking them to please not use the program as it was dragging down the workstations.
Here is the memo in full (with a hat tip to @mathewi on Twitter)
Email sent to the New York Times newsroom from Terry Schwadron. —Zach Seward, Nieman Journalism Lab
———- Forwarded message ———- From: Schwadron, Terry Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 5:06 PM Subject: [NYT Newsroom] To newsroom twitter users To:
To Newsroom Twitter users:
We are seeing a growing number of complaints from people with computer performance problems that have been traced to TweetDeck, an application that some have installed on Times workstations and laptops to follow Twitter messages. Though still in beta and not officially released, TweetDeck is indeed a handy tool for high-power Twitter users to keep track of multiple threads simultaneously.
However, it also takes a serious bite out of the performance of many computers, particularly older PCs.
We recommend against installing it or using it on Times computers.
Several other applications, including Twitter’s own website, will suffice for most users. We plan to test some of the favorites against Times workstation configurations, and make a recommendation shortly on some that appear to be both safe and easy to use, for both casual and power users.
If you do install TweetDeck, know that it will slow your workstation.
News Technology
Ooops.
