Is Deck.ly Wrecking Twitter?
February 11th, 2011 by Rob Brown
Today I became the unwitting perpetrator of a modest outbreak of cyber-bullying. My colleague and fellow PR Media blogger @jonclements was on the receiving end because I had accused him of spoiling twitter by using more than 140 characters. I should explain.
Tweetdeck has been rolling out version 0.37.2 incorporating deck.ly a facility for posting longer tweets. Jon likes it. As for me, not so much, and it seems that I’m not alone. My slightly tongue in cheek micro blog generated two dozen responses in just twenty minutes and it seems that most users agree that breaking the digit limit is off side.
Deck.ly only works in Tweetdeck. Users of other twitter applications get a link to the longer tweet. Despite this it has provoked considerable ire. A thread on the Tweetdeck support forum entitled ‘Let’s turn off deck.ly’ has attracted nearly 100 comments in just a week. According to the twitter blog Tweetdeck is the leading third party application for twitter so it could change the way many people use twitter. I believe that part of the beauty of twitter is its brevity. Tweetdeck has responded and a new version v.0.37.3 which has the option of disabling the add-on. But is that enough?
About Rob Brown
Rob Brown has worked in PR for over 20 years and for over fifteen years held senior PR positions within three major global advertising networks; Euro RSCG, McCann Erickson and TBWA. He launched his own business ‘Rule 5’ in MediaCityUK, Manchester in November 2012. Rob is the author of ‘Public Relations and the Social Web’ (2009), blogs for The Huffington Post and is joint editor of the forthcoming 'Share This Too' (2013).
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Damon Says:
Yes good to have option – and if not forced on the general Twitter population as only shown within their own environment seems a reasonable stance. Now v.0.37.3 lets you switch off as well …. even more flexible. Remember Tweetdeck is just not Twitter only – so may be something other communities want as well given differnet parameters.
Craig McGill Says:
That’s a tricky one. Some people will just rabbit on, which to me defeats the purpose. Twitter is for 120 characters or less (give people a space to RT you) 140 at a push (if you don’t want RT), anything longer is Facebook and anything longer than the (I think) 425 that Facebook gives you is a blog post.
More to the point, these platforms are meant to be inclusive to all so suddenly having some who can get longer tweets and some can’t seems divisive.
UberTwitter Now UserSocial After Block « PR and the Social Web Says:
[...] The service has now been changed to UberSocial with immediate effect. Tweetdeck which recently introduced Deck.ly to allow longer tweets must be watching with interest and concern. DestroyTwitter is also presumably on the [...]
Vic Says:
I like Deck.ly I’m very wordy and sometimes 140 characters just doesnt cut it at all. Also I Role Play and being constricted to 140 words just wouldnt work when in the middle of a story line. If TD has removed deck.ly then Ill move onto Seismic and use twitlonger.