Apps like TweetDeck emerged in large part because Twitter serves a wide array of purposes for its users. By , professionals hear what people say about their products and keep track of industry colleagues. Consumers can follow messages shared by their friends, family or favorite celebrities.

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On the regular version of Twitter (which you access by logging into ), your stream of updates will encompass everyone whose Twitter feeds you follow, which can be overwhelming. You can't have separate windows for your friends, family, colleagues, and customers. Instead, it all streams down your Twitter home page in one unified view.

Luckily, TweetDeck has a lot of upsides for business users who want to get a better grip on Twitter. TweetDeck allows you to partition off groups of your Twitter acquaintances into their own nice, tidy window panes. It's ideal for people . In addition, TweetDeck integrates with , so you can view status messages from your contacts on that service, or easily publish your own tweets to their Facebook News Feeds.

TweetDeck runs on , a technology that allows you to use rich Internet applications (RIAs) on your desktop. As such, you must (and it will direct you to install AIR if you don't already have it). When you launch TweetDeck, you simply enter in your Twitter user name and password to get started.