Deck.Blue

I recently wrote a post describing Twitter Chats and how the concept of using a microblog as a chat platform originally making use of Twitter had seemingly been migrated to BlueSky. For BlueSky users I realized I had left out the description of a tool that makes chats reasonably efficient.

With Twitter, there was a tool called TweetDeck that served this same purpose. What TweetDeck allowed was the creation of a multi-column display that allowed a defined subset of Tweets to be displayed in an individual column. For those participating in a chat, any contributions were to include a tag (e.g., #grabechat) in tweets and these tweets in TweetDeck would then be separated to appear in the column focused on this hashtag. You did not have to follow those individuals participating in the chat for this to work as it was basically a search function AND the search was automatically repeated at short intervals so you also did not have keep entering a search prompt during a chat session. TweetDeck was not created to serve this specific purpose, but it worked beautifully.

Tweetdeck has had a rocky history. It was free, it was blocked, and it has since emerged as a paid app.

A similar product, Deck.Blue, has emerged for BlueSky and for those interested in a chat activity, it works similarly. This is a computer app as it requires a larger screen to display multiple columns. The following two images show what a multi-column display looks like. The first two columns are the standard feeds and the third is a column I created to follow #edchat. 

The second image shows how to create a new column. The easiest way is to conduct a search for a tag and the immediate results that are then displayed. 

Deck.blue is currently available at no cost but if you intend to use this on a regular basis there is a Patreon link to support developers. I would anticipate there will eventually be a subscription fee.