On to the not-so-positives. The tweet box now pops up and steals the focus until you close it. A small change, you might think, but I regularly half-write tweets while I keep reading those of others, then react as I go. Sometimes I leave a tweet for ten minutes to decide whether it should really be sent (it usually shouldn’t). This prevents that, and it’s totally unnecessary. You also can’t send a tweet using Enter, and if you think you can go to Settings and change that, you can’t – it’s been pared back to the idiot-proof basics.

Tweets are now labelled with the number of days ago they were sent, rather than the actual time. That might not sound much, but I can think of many occasions when seeing a tweet was sent at 12pm or 12am made a big difference to the way I interpreted it. Every tweet now gives pride of place to the username of the sender, rather than the tweet itself. And unsurprisingly, the range of URL shorteners and photo services is cut right down, with Twitter’s own now the default.

It’s that oversimplification that constantly jars. When I first installed it and synced it up with my TweetDeck account, I was presented with a Home column of tweets, a Me column of mentions, and a Messages column for those all-important DMs.

But something wasn’t right. There were DMs I hadn’t sent or received. There were people in my Home feed I didn’t follow.

Now, I don’t just tweet from one account; I have three. I’m sure many people do the same, be it personal and work accounts, websites they run, or just a desire for different accounts for different needs.

New TweetDeck had taken it upon itself to make assumptions about my three accounts. The Home feed was taken solely from the team’s @pcpro account, which it had randomly assigned as my default despite there being seemingly no option to set an account as default. I’ve tried deleting all three accounts and adding them in a different order, but it always becomes the default. This also means every time I type a tweet, it assumes I’m sending it from that account, which I rarely do; if you see @pcpro tweet about its hangover on Saturday morning, blame TweetDeck, not me.

The Me feed and Messages column, on the other hand, automatically roll all three accounts into one, with no proper indication of which tweet came from which account. I don’t want to read my editor’s correspondence with our lovely readers mixed in with my own private messages; it’s confusing, a little bit scary and raises the potential for embarrassing blunders. I have three separate accounts for a reason; the decision to bundle them together should be mine, not TweetDeck’s.

Most of this can be fixed by simply deleting all of the default columns and creating new Timelines and Messages columns for each individual account, but to a long-term user like me it seems a perverse way of doing things. Don’t get me started on the way every link and photo now sends you to the browser, or clicking a tweet opens it over that column in the style of the Twitter web interface.

It’s not terrible, and I’m sure I’ll get used to some of its quirks. But for me the new client takes away much of what made TweetDeck so useful – namely the flexibility and control – and replaces it with much of what makes the Twitter web client so annoying. I don’t like the Twitter web interface, that’s why I use TweetDeck. Or at least it was until now. The former buying the latter means that distinction is only going to get narrower from here on in.

Twitter. Some people love it, some people don’t see the point. Others, like me, don’t see the point, make a song and dance about deleting their account, then sheepishly create a new one months later and admit that everyone else was right. Not my problem, Twitter must have got better in the interim.

But I think we can all agree that Twitter’s appeal lies in its short and sweet format. The 140-character limit is what makes “following” someone so appealing: it keeps things snappy, streamlined and often surprisingly creative. Even the most interesting Twitter user will post tweets that aren’t for you; the key is that every tweet is short and sweet and as easily skippable as any other.

At least it was, until a light bulb pinged on above the head of some bright spark at TweetDeck. Yes, its new deck.ly feature lets you keep typing beyond that 140th character. Instead of a warning red – you’re droning on… – you get an encouraging green: keep typing, you really are fascinating!

While visitors to your feed on the Twitter website will see a truncated tweet with the now-familiar URL link to the rest – a feature that I already find annoying – other TweetDeck users will see the first 310 characters of the tweet, followed by a Read more link that opens the full tweet in a popup.

It takes up the space of two standard tweets in your stream, so while the tweeter blathers on regardless, it’s the follower whose experience is impacted – and as far as I can see there’s no way to disable the feature, even if you don’t need or want it for your own tweets.

Worse than that, if this catches on and the huge number of TweetDeck users take it to their hearts, anyone not using the client could soon find their 140-character Twitter feeds clogged up with half-finished fragments. If it’s an attempt to get everyone onto TweetDeck, I pray it fails miserably.

I’m not against progress or innovation. I’m not going to campaign to stop people writing long tweets that spill over to a URL if that’s what they desperately want to do. In the previously perfect world I could simply skip over those few in the same way I do when Barry sends his hourly ode to Justin Bieber.

But I’m already seeing tweets of double length since the TweetDeck update began rolling out, and so far I’ve not seen one that wouldn’t have been improved by the existing character limit. Perhaps it comes from editing words for a living. Perhaps I’ll come to see the merit in more freedom on Twitter. I don’t think so.

For now all it’s succeeded in doing is make me want to uninstall TweetDeck, which is surely the opposite of what a feature update should achieve. So, in 140 characters or less… anyone know a good Twitter client?

UPDATE: Victory! As of update v0.37.3 TweetDeck will stop the double-height tweets, as well as give you the option of disabling deck.ly for your own tweets. It would appear I wasn’t alone in complaining!

TweetDeck’s arrival on Android has been somewhat belated. After all, it’s the most popular desktop client around, and it’s been available on iOS since June 2009. It’s my desktop client of choice, too, so I’ve been particularly keen to try out the mobile version. Better late than never, I guess.

It certainly looks like TweetDeck. The familiar shades-of-grey theme is evident here, and the mobile app borrows the column-driven format of the desktop version. Three are initially included – your main feed, your mentions and your direct messages – but more can be added, with your favourites, lists or searches available.

It’s obvious that plenty of thought has gone into the UI, too. Navigation is as simple as swiping between columns, and each is refreshed by clicking on its name at the top of the window. Click on a tweet to find options for replying, retweeting and more, and select the user to load up a full profile.

Navigation is easy: just swipe between columns and use the trio of dots in the upper right-hand corner to keep track of which column you’re using. There are other helpful touches: when you’ve refreshed a column, a yellow bar on the right-hand side of the screen illustrates how many tweets you’ve got to trawl through and diminishes as you scroll through unread messages. We did have to reduce text size, though, as the default font barely allowed three tweets on screen at once.

The tweet writing area lets you trawl through your albums to attach pictures and provides direct access to your default camera app. It’ll also use your phone’s GPS to add your location to messages. A search function allows contact names to be quickly added, too, and the GPS can be used in conjunction with Google Maps to track local users and their posts.

More advanced options allows for multiple Twitter accounts as well as Facebook, Buzz and Foursquare integration – handy for those folk who enjoy annoying the rest of us as they announce that they’re the new Mayor of McDonalds – and the options screen serves up tools to change your notification and automatic update settings.

Power users might miss the odd feature, such as choosing your picture uploading or URL shortening service, but Tweetdeck offers everything the average Twitterer will need in one of the best UIs we’ve seen on Android. It’s slick, free, and more than worthy of our Android App of the Week accolade.

Want more great Android apps? Check out our previous Android Apps of the Week or read our 36 Best Android Apps feature.

The problem is that the stream of information moves so fast. Even using the quite impressive TweetDeck, I find it impossible to keep track of the endless streams of communications happening. And the thing is, it’s not that I don’t want to hear what the likes of Jack Schofield at The Guardian have to say, but, well, he says so much! As do the numerous other friends, colleagues, influencers and publications that I follow.

Yes, splitting the people you follow into groups will help – so if you just want to hear what friends are saying, then you create that group and add true friends to it – but this in itself is just stuffing the problem under the carpet in the vague hope no-one’s going to vacuum there. Say you create three or four groups. Are you really going to follow what they’re saying?

The truth is that many people – and obviously no readers of this blog, because we’re all so very wise and self-effacing and rounded as human beings – add many individuals who in fact we have little interest in following, in the hope that they’ll follow us and then make our numbers look good.

We then create those groups in TweetDeck, never to look at the “All Friends” stream ever again. And so I come to the question I pose in the title of this blog: exactly how many people can you really, truly follow on Twitter?

I’d say a realistic figure, unless you decide to dedicate your working hours to this device, is 50. And that’s incorporating a fair number of occasional Tweeters rather than the chain Tweeters of this world.

But, I’m willing to admit, I may be wrong. Or just anti-social. If you have time between all those Tweets you need to make, let me know how many people you follow on Twitter… and how many you really care about.

PC Pro’s great Twitter adventure is barely a fortnight old (sign up for our Twitter feed here) but already we’ve found a great number of things that both amaze and annoy us about the micro-blogging site.

Here, in no particular order, are things we like, and can’t stand, about Twitter. Ideas suggested by others on the PC Pro Twitter feed and elsewhere are duly credited in brackets.

GOOD THINGS

1. Simplicity. You sign up, start Tweeting, and the ball’s rolling within minutes. 

2. It’s a brilliant way of breaking news. “It’s almost like the old Telex machines” says senior news reporter, Stu, who’s barely old enough to remember them.

3. It’s good for getting other people to write your presentation for you (DarienGS)

4. Celebrities talk like “real” people without agents/producers/editors getting in the way. And the best Tweeting stars actually interact with their audience. Dave Gorman being a prime example. 

5. Immediacy. 

6. 140-character limit makes you think more about what you’re saying (montemplar)

7. Anyone can do it.

8. Twitter allows people to fire-off inane day-to-day stuff that (hopefully) keeps other channels of communication (email, SMS, blogs) tidier.

9. Variety of ways to access: PC, mobile, multiple apps and widgets. (montemplar)

10. You can stamp personality and bespoke design on profile pages, yet they retain a simple, consistent structure.

11. Trend spotting. Services such as TwitScoop make it easy to spot what’s going on right now. 

12. It’s free.

13. In a world of Flash, Java, Ajax and other attention-hogging wibbles, it’s refreshingly clean.

14. The API – inspired decision to distribute freely has created a million and one different apps, widgets and plug-ins. TweetDeck being our current favourite. 

15. No need for niceities. You cut straight to the point.

16. We’re irrationally pleased when someone we like/respect starts following us.

17. We know what our readers think of us, thanks to TweetDeck search.

18. You’re not constantly bombarded with ads, as with other free services. 

19. That said, it’s an amazingly powerful, well-targeted sales channel. 

20. The man who founded it is called Biz Stone.

BAD THINGS

1. It panders to our short attention spans.

2. Anyone can do it.

3. 140 chr limit makes us all spk like teenagers. FFS. 

4. It quickly becomes an unmanagable flood.

5. It’s another bloody thing to keep up-to-date.

6. Presentation. The site looks like your dad built it, in between putting up shelves and the rugby.

7. The number of companies that suddenly start following you after you mention their products. (parsingphase)

7. Reliability. It’s up and down like Amy Winehouse.

8. Media bandwagon. Sky bloody News has now got a Twitter Correspondent. Hell’s teeth.

9. Fake celeb profiles. Yawn.

10. It’s not (yet) sustainable. Trillions of users, no clear way to make money from them.

11. It’s hard to maintain a professional image.

12. It’s horribly addictive. 

13. Conversations are desperately difficult to follow. 

14. Spambots.

15. We can’t ignore it. Like a sullen puppy, it craves attention.

16. We know what our readers really think of us thanks to TweetDeck search.

17. Someone beat us to pcpro. Grrr.

18. We’re still not sure what the point of it really is.

19. Jargon. RT. Hashtags. Just what the world needed. More things that need explaining. 

20. “New Media” consultants are being paid thousands of pounds per hour to bandy about terms like Twitterverse to gormless corporate morons who are desperate to go Web 2.0. Someone pass the shovel.