Finding Alternatives to TweetDeck: A Guide for Journalists and Social Media Consultants

We knew this was coming

Elon Musk-owned X (formerly Twitter) finally made XPro (formerly TweetDeck) a subscriber-only product.

A valuable tool for professionals

As a tool commonly used by journalists, researchers, and social media consultants, TweetDeck was incredibly useful for keeping track of different timelines, lists, trends, and keywords simultaneously. Unfortunately, finding a suitable alternative to TweetDeck, whether paid or free, has proven to be quite challenging.

Expensive alternatives

Hootsuite does offer a custom content discovery streams feature, which is the closest option to TweetDeck, but it comes with a substantial cost starting at $99 per month. If your focus is primarily on the multiple timeline feature and not the additional social media marketing tools, alternatives like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Buffer are not viable options.

Looking beyond Twitter

For users who are planning to move away from Twitter, Mastodon offers an in-built setting for a multi-column view on the desktop. By enabling this feature through Preferences > Appearance > Enable Advanced Web Interface, users can experience a similar layout to TweetDeck on Mastodon.

Explore other options

If you’re looking to follow different publications and track news, press.coop on Mastodon offers a Twitter mirror for popular news outlets. This platform provides a timeline of posts from these publications on the fediverse, giving users a convenient way to stay informed. Additionally, the press.coop directory allows users to follow these publications and see their updates in their own timeline.

To replicate the TweetDeck experience on Mastodon and find your Twitter network, tools like Fedifinder can be used. Another option is the paid app Ivory for Mastodon, developed by Tapbot, which provides a multi-column experience on the desktop.

While Bluesky is currently an invite-only social network, apps like Skydeck or Blueskydeck can allow users to replicate the multi-column experience on this platform.

Alternative workaround

If you’re not using any of these social networks but still rely on Twitter, there’s a hack you can use. It may not be as effective as using a dedicated app or tool, but, for now, it gets the job done. The Browser Company’s Arc browser offers a split-screen view with the ability to add up to four tabs. By utilizing this feature, users can treat each tab as a TweetDeck column. Arc also includes a Boosts feature, allowing users to modify web pages and customize their Twitter experience.

The frustration of limited options

It’s understandable that not being able to find a suitable alternative to TweetDeck can be frustrating. This situation could have been avoided if Twitter had offered more reasonable pricing for its API instead of the current $42,000 per month enterprise tier. By doing so, developers would have been incentivized to create multiple options for users in need of a TweetDeck alternative.

In the end, users are left with two choices: either pay $8 per month to use TweetDeck or explore other social networks in the hopes of finding a comparable solution.