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Twitter launches Dashboard app for small business accounts
Because business owners have better things to do than tweet.
To help business owners connect with their fans and soothe angry patrons, Twitter is launching yet another stand-alone app with a specific audience in mind. Twitter Dashboard is the social network's attempt to streamline engagement for business accounts, whose users probably have better things to do than babysitting their mentions or constantly searching their own name.
Dashboard lives both in a web and iOS version, and includes features that have popped up in other Twitter products in the past. In both versions, Twitter guides you through a quick process to create a custom "About You" feed tailored to show tweets about your company or business (or personal brand, as the case may be). The feed takes into account what type of business you're running (say a restaurant or an art gallery), then combines @-mentions and keyword searches to find people talking about your brand, even if they don't tag your handle directly. In addition to a tweet scheduling feature and a reconfigured analytics page, Dashboard also offers tips so business owners who might be new to Twitter can get the most engagement out of their tweets.
At this point, Twitter's app ecosystem is starting to look a little fractured with the standard Twitter app, Tweetdeck for the power users and Engage for the celebrities. But, more than anything, the app lineup speaks to the range of different ways in which people actually use the social network.
