If you have lots of Twitter pals, your All Friends column on TweetDeck can often get quite noisy. That cocktail party-like hubbub is part of the Twitter appeal, but there may be times when you’d prefer something more like a quiet night out with a few friends. 

For example, if you and a few of your friends are working on a project, tweets from those friends will probably be more important to you than the other tweets that come your way. Similarly, if you’re at work you might prefer to concentrate on just what your co-workers have to say.

This kind of thing just isn’t possible with the Twitter Web site, but TweetDeck offers a Group feature that lets you gather a subset of your friends into a group, and TweetDeck then displays just the tweets from those people in a separate column. 

This is a perfect solution because you can still keep an eye on the raucous goings-on in your All Friends column, but the tweets you really want to see are conveniently laid out for you in your new Group column. 

Even better, TweetDeck lets you define multiple groups, so you can keep track of all your different factions.

Here’s how it works:

1.  Click the Group button in the toolbar.  It’s the icon that shows a couple of people. TweetDeck displays the Add a New Group column.

2.  Type a name for the group.

3.  Select the check box beside each user you want to include in the group, as shown in figure 8.7.

4.  Click Save Group.  TweetDeck creates the new column and displays the tweets from just the group members, as shown in figure 8.8.

"Twitter Tips: Creating a TweetDeck group "