TweetDeck‘s iPhone app just got a much-needed update. Version 1.3 brings a slew of new features that finally puts TweetDeck back on par with its competitors on the iPhone. The app now supports Twitter lists and Twitter’s new geotagging API. The app also offers optional support for Twitter’s new retweet style, and the TweetDeck team has made a number of smaller tweaks and fixes that make the app faster and more stable.
Lists
TweetDeck for iPhone keeps the app’s well-known column-style layout and still syncs any changes directly with the desktop app. It’s great to see that TweetDeck now supports lists. However, unlike other apps – like Tweetie 2 – TweetDeck for iPhone doesn’t allow you to create new lists or even add new users to an existing lists.
Location
In today’s announcement, the TweetDeck team puts a lot of emphasis on the new geolocation features in the app. You can now choose to geotag all of your tweets automatically or just add your location info to select tweets only.
The app can now also display a map with an overview of all geotagged tweets in any given column (including columns that display persistent searches). Just click ‘more’ in the bottom right corner and the option to see all the tweets on a map will appear. Given that very few people currently tag their tweets with location data, however, chances are that your map will look rather empty. Over time, though, as more apps start to support this feature, these maps will hopefully fill up with more tweets as well. For now, this is an interesting feature, though it is probably only useful for a small group of users.
Using Geotagged Tweets for Weather Reports
Once you have upgraded to TweetDeck 1.3, also have a look at our story about how the National Weather Service in the U.S. is using geotagged weather reports from Twitter users during severe weather events. You just have to add the hashtag #wxreport to your geotagged tweet if you want to help out.
