What is Seesmic Desktop 2?
Seesmic is a cross platform social and web application that allows its users to break up their Twitter stream into multiple columns as well as manage multiple Twitter accounts.
Getting Started
Installing Seesmic on your desktop is simple via a quick download and install link. Once installed, the application will fire up and give you some options to access the dashboard settings, your accounts, notifications and plugins.
Setting up your Twitter account for example is pretty simple using the Twitter application authorization method. You can also add Facebook, Google Buzz which is pretty much obsolete now, LinkedIn, Ping.fm and a few others to mention. There are no account options for Google Plus as of yet though.
Once you’ve finished adding the accounts you want to your dashboard you can then just hit save.
Once the dashboard loads up, your social profiles and its respective feeds will be displayed in columns very similar to HootSuite. In the Twitter column for example the all tab allows you to access features such as live feed, private feed and @replies, sent and pending messages, twitter trends and the Marketplace.
There is a nice wide ‘post an update’ message composer which allows you to post your messages directly into any of your profiles inc facilities to add links which is automatically shorten by Bit.ly, images, and even schedule your messages. You can also shorten with twitlonger and translate your messages before posting, pretty neat.
Customizing your Dashboard
At the bottom left hand corner of your dashboard there is a settings / options link which flips the screen around back to the main options page. Under general settings you can –
- Enable background highlighting
- Enable item bar highlighting
- Enable automatic URL shortening in the composer window
- Highlight new content availability
- Enable spell checking in the composer window
You can also adjust the font face settings and size of font as well as change the background colour.
If you want to share the configuration settings across other computers and devices you can login to your Seesmic profile to do this or register for one.
Seesmic or HootSuite?
This is a tricky one as they’re both potentially great social dashboards however I’d say that HootSuite offers way more options to the user. Also the dashboard in HootSuite although not as customizable as Seesmic it’s still a lot more aesthetically pleasing. One of the biggest features with Seesmic is the marketplace where you can get access to loads of top plugins such as Flickr, Tumblr and Google Reader.
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