When I first began at Venture Accelerator Partners, we were using TweetDeck as our main application to monitor and maintain our Twitter stream. After trying out TweetDeck for a couple of months we decided that it was time to try a different application, HootSuite.

It’s important to note that both these Twitter management applications offer different benefits and draw backs. I am going to outline these so that you will be able to make a more informed decision of which application makes a better fit for you and your team.

TweetDeck

• Desktop: TweetDeck is an application that must be downloaded onto your desktop. This is great because every member of your team can have a personalized Tweetdeck with accounts and streams of their choosing. This being said if, anything were to go wrong with your desktop you will lose Tweetdeck which will require you to set it up again.

• Scheduling: TweetDeck’s interface is easy to use for scheduling tweets. You simply type in your tweet, select the account and choose a time. TweetDeck allows you to set up tweets at any time interval down to the minute ex. 12:32, 2:17 etc. However, TweetDeck works on a 12 hour cycle which means that you can only schedule tweets within the 12 hours that you are on.

• Streams: TweetDeck permits you to add a number of Twitter accounts, lists, searches, replies and direct messages all in one streamline page. This means that there are no separate tabs for separate accounts you are maintaining. This could potentially cause confusion among the various Twitter streams.

• Retweets and Mentions: When you open TweetDeck a little pop up window will appear showing the mentions and retweets you have received since you last opened the application. If you continue to have the application open you will be able to see retweets live, with the pop up of a new window.

HootSuite

• Cloud: HootSuite is a cloud application which means that all your Twitter information is online. This is an important aspect because you will be able to reach your personal HootSuite on any computer anywhere. However, if you don’t have a premium account you will not be able to add the same Twitter account to multiple users. To clarify, any particular Twitter account can be added only to one HootSuite account. Therefore if you have multiple people monitoring, you will only have one HootSuite account for everyone.

• Scheduling: HootSuite allows you to schedule tweets very easily as well; simply type in your tweet, choose which account to send it from and at what time. The one down fall of the scheduling system is the you can only schedule tweets in whole minute numbers ex 2:10, 2:15, 2:20.

• Streams: HootSuite uses tabs to help organize the different twitter accounts that you add. Therefore you can add all aspects of an account in one tab. For example, if you have an open search on your personal account on music and fashion you won’t be able to see it under your business account tab.The only thing that is limiting with the streams on HootSuite is that you can only add 10 streams within each tab.

• Retweets and Mentions: Hootsuite allows you to add a stream called mentions to your twitter account. Here you can see all the mentions and retweets you are receiving. There is another stream called “My Tweets, Retweeted” which shows you which of your content has been retweeted by how many people. However, the stream doesn’t indicate who retweeted the information. You will have to go to Twitter.com to see who retweeted the information.

The bottom line is that there are benefits and drawback to both applications. When it comes to choosing a Twitter management tool, it is up to you decide what kinds of features you find most valuable. One thing is for sure, having a Twitter management tool will greatly help in optimizing all the features Twitter offers. For more tips on using Twitter check out our white paper “Getting Started with Twitter.”