I cannot fathom what is going on at Twitter.

Millions of dollars flowing their way, adulation, sponsorships and the chance to recruit masters of user interface design and HTML5.

Yet the app they bought, Tweetdeck, is floundering terribly.

In my job, I train TV staff and recommend to a range of journalists and TV producers on what apps they hsould use for navigating Twitter.

My first comments are;

1) Don’t use the Twitter website if you can help it.

2) Don’t download the latest version of Tweetdeck.

Yet, as a social media manager, I have no great option with which to use Twitter on a PC desktop machine.

Yes, Hootsuite.com is getting ne by – and saves anyone who can’t install an app on their work PC – but my point is that Twitter, by purchasing Tweetdeck, was supposed to improve it into the killer app it should be. Instead it is has faltered at nearly every turn.

Oh how I despise it. Let me count the ways…

1) I can’t trust the schedule function, It regularly posts tweets immediately, not at prescribed times.

2) I cannot add someone to a list (this was available in a previous version)

3) I must add an entire column/feed of an user in order to access an individual tweet’s details.

4) The black background is not everyone’s cup of tea. It was cool for a while but now the contrast makes me squint and my OHS advisor agrees. So there.

5) The Chrome version fails to link to it’s own extension in the left-click option ‘Share this via Tweetdeck’

6) I cannot remove some accounts I no longer use. They reappear every time I reopen the app in some kind of mystical syncing debacle I am not privy to.

7) I cannot choose from which account I am favouriting a tweet or following a user.

8) The iPhone app has always been intolerable and the latest iteration does little to help it comete with stable, speedy options like @tweetbot

9) All these people agree with me

10) No threaded conversations? Or, only when it wants to show them. Pfft

11) I’m given a set number of columns or to get to the adjacent column I have to switch to a new three? No.

12) Adobe Air. It’s a daft idea to think I should keep approving updates to a secondary program I don’t really need. And its adds substantially to Tweetdeck’s reputation as a ‘memory hog’ slowing down your whole computer.

But like in the Bible and in all good Harry Potter books, there is hope….

You can download the old Tweetdeck!

Or, as I mentioned, try Hootsuite, a web-based version that actually does a lot more – perhaps too much – and it does it efficiently. There are many reasons to switch, but as I tell staff who are new to Twitter, don’t even try Tweetdeck out to begin with.

Is it salvageable? Of course. If they stripped it back to what it could do well to begin with – multiple feeds that are searchable – and add on features that other top apps now include, Tweetdeck could bounce back.

Is this likely? I don’t think so. Have you seen the latest range of changes Twitter brought to its own website? Connect/Discover/Whatever…