Tweetdeck adds Foursquare for location based updates

TweetDeck, the popular Adobe Air desktop app for social networks (though an HTML5 version is on the way), has now integrated Foursquare into its latest release. The move represents the latest from the startup to grab the “social dashboard” crown against the likes of Seesmic and others, although Tweetdeck seems to be heading towards a kind of “Pro User” space more than anything else.

Now, adding your Foursquare account into Tweetdeck adds a location column. This has the handy benefit that Foursquare tweets can now be filtered out of your “All Friends” twitter column. A lot of people will probably welcome this as they tend to polute Twitter rather than adding anything to it. Now, the location column has a map button at the bottom. Clicking on this lets you view a live map of friends checking into Foursquare. Tweetdeck plans to extend this map shortly to be available in a separate view on a check-in item in the location column.

And if your Foursquare friends have connected their Twitter or Facebook accounts then you can mouse over their avatar and reply to them via wither of those networks, DM them, email them, check yourself into the location, add a location tip or get directions to where your friend is. Pretty neat.

In addition TweetDeck is now much more location aware. So if you have added location to your Twitter and/or have added a Foursquare account, you can click on a new location pin icon from a previously used Foursquare venue or twitter “place” to your status update.

You can also use your laptop to check in in the same way that you’d use your mobile phone. You do this by clicking on “Set new location” button. This opens a browser window to a special TweetDeck page which grabs your current location (where that is supported by the browser) and then displays nearby Foursquare venues and your coordinates which can be used by twitter. Thus you can check-in to a Foursquare venue and geo-tag your tweets all at the same time.

Interestingly, it’s also possible to schedule a Foursquare check-in for some time in the future using Tweetdeck’s new scheduling service. But that won’t count towards Foursquare points or badges unless you are actually at the venue.