TweetDeck has a very useful search feature where you can create a new column using search parameters of your choosing to filter tweets in Twitter. These tweets are from all of Twitter, not just from those you follow; so it’s a good way to find new people to follow (if you choose) or to keep aprised on the latest happenings in your particular business niche, hobby, area of interest or even to monitor mentions of your name, brand or company to provide better customer service.

This brief video shows you how to setup a Search column in TweetDeck.

Twitter only allows 100 API (application programming interface) [Note: Twitter has raised the API to 150, but I still recommend the same settings as shown in the video tutorial] calls/requests per hour. So when using an application like TweetDeck to receive and read your tweets, especially if you follow a lot of tweeps, you may get that infamous ‘rate limit exceeded’ message in the lower right corner of your TweetDeck. To avoid this, you need to adjust your Twitter API settings.

This short video shows you how to adjust your Twitter API settings within TweetDeck.

Today, TweetDeck announced a beta version where you can post status updates to Facebook via Twitter using TweetDeck – and, you can now receive your Facebook friends’ status updates into your TweetDeck in their very own column. You can then email or tweet your friends’ status updates right from TweetDeck. There is also an indicator in TweetDeck to let you know if your friend is currently online at Facebook, should you wish to log into Facebook and chat with them.

This new TweetDeck also gives you the option to send your tweets/status updates done via TweetDeck to Twitter, Facebook or both.

This new version is still in beta, so will not auto update just yet. You can download this beta version at the TweetDeck blog.