TweetDeck vs Digsby: A Close Competition

Of all the Twitter clients I tried, Digsy was the one that almost stole me away from using TweetDeck, which is surprising considering Digsby was the most lacking in features of all the clients I tried. I used Digsby for several months before making the switch to TweetDeck and still alternated back and forth between the two for while after that. Even now, there are days when I’m tempted to use Digsby just to get a break from the annoying TweetDeck chirp.

Here are a few of the benefits of using Digsby:

• Handles multiple accounts for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn
• Ability to open separate columns for each account, resize them, and move them to any position on the screen.
• Completely customizable appearance with skins.
• Ability to customize the notification sounds (big, big, BIG plus for me).
• Can be used for instant messaging and email as well as for managing social network accounts
• Less memory usage than TweetDeck

Unfortunately, as much as I loved the ability to customize the look and feel of Digsby, there were too many features I needed that it just didn’t have and ultimately those missing features drove me to TweetDeck. Here are some of the features Digsby didn’t offer:

• No ability to create saved searches in columns so I could monitor subjects that are of interest to me.
• No way to save the position and sizes of the columns for each account when opened and positioned on the screen. Each time I started the program, I would have to reopen the columns, re-size them and reposition them on the screen again.
• Each column opened took up space on my taskbar.
• Not able to view, follow, or unfollow Twitter profiles without going to the Twitter website and logging into one of the accounts.
• No ability to handle images or video within Digsby.
• No ability to post messages to multiple accounts at the same time.

I think the part of Digsby that most impressed me was the customization features. I love being able to customize the look and sound of my software to match my personality. With Digsby, you can do that. With TweetDeck, you can’t.

I hope the developers of TweetDeck are listening and will someday add more customization options to their software. If they do that, they will be almost unbeatable as a Social Networking client. For TweetDeck competitors, here’s your chance. If you can have all the features of TweetDeck AND add the ability to customize font size, column size and positioning within the program screen, colors and notification sounds, you’ll knock TweetDeck out of the park.