Why you should avoid Deck.ly’s dreaded long tweets and more.
One thing I like to teach is that if you want someone to do something, make it as easy as possible for them to do it. Sometimes this advice can backfire when it comes to something that you DON’T want people to do.
TweetDeck, recently voted the Best Twitter Client by Lifehacker readers, and my personal favorite, recently launched a new service called Deck.ly, which allows you to post tweets that are longer than the usual 140-character limit… in a way.
Whenever you use TweetDeck to tweet a long message, TweetDeck will automatically cut off your message near the standard limit, adding a short url to a deck.ly page with the entire message. People can also leave comments on that page, which is more like a short blog post than a tweet.
Deck.ly is turned on in TweetDeck by default (and can now be turned off, not the case initially), and that alone explains why so many people are using it. See for yourself by Twitter-searching “deck.ly” and wait for 30 seconds to see hundreds if not thousands of new tweets appear with deck.ly urls.
So is this a good thing? I tweeted a poll, and here’s what people had to say:
To sum up:
- Deck.ly isn’t supported on iOS, so you’re just frustrating some of your followers by using it
- Using Deck.ly defeats the philosophy of Twitter to keep messages short and sweet
- It’s a cop-out that lets people be lazy and ramble on BUT sometimes you just do need that extra space
- Deck.ly paradoxically forces you to leave Twitter to enjoy its tweets
- And I’ll add in: you get no notification of comments left on Deck.ly’s tweet pages (yet), unlike when someone responds to your actual tweets
I remember the first time I saw a non-Deck.ly long tweet on Twitter a few years ago. It was so out of place that I thought Twitter had been hacked.
Taking advantage of the fact that less people are blogging in favor of tweets & status messages, TweetDeck was smart to create its own copycat service of XLTweet or Long Tweets. We might not like it, and it’s not yet a good idea to use it, but we may as well get used to it.
How do you feel about Deck.ly and its long tweets? Tell us in the comments.
Author:
Jacob Share, a job search expert, is the creator of JobMob, one of the biggest blogs in the world about finding jobs. Follow him on Twitter for job search tips and humor.
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Tweetdeck – finally – listened and rolled a new update today, making the horrid Deck.ly optional.. Hallelujah!
I do not think that this will ruin Twitter, I think it might turn people away from TweetDeck though. I find that you can get your point across in 140 characters. For anything more than that people link to their blogs/source. If you have something to say that takes up more than 140 characters, put it on your blog, then drop the link in Twitter. Using TweetDeck’s new feature only steals traffic from your site and slows you from growing your brand.
Here’s the thing: It’s another step in the evolution of communication. Every single person who has ever used Twitter has at one time or another wished he or she had another 10 characters to finish a thought instead of trying creative ways to edit. Deck.ly does that for you.
What I think will happen is that people will very slowly start to see its benefit, then it will roll out. And there will be a sort of law of averages on long/short tweets – maybe it’s 150 characters, maybe 200, but not long-winded – because people will already be used to short bursts of info.
Another thing is that Tweetdeck may offer users the option of turning off any tweets that arrive via deck.ly – so you won’t even see them clog up your feeds.
I am not a big fan of it. I don’t use it and don’t see a need for it, but that doesn’t mean I will never use it when I desperately need those extra 10 characters.
Love it… as things evolve we get new tools… I dont see how this is different than bit.ly or tweetpic where a third party is used to “flesh out” the tweet.
On another matter though, tweetdeck seems to be going back to it’s old was with screen freezes and “flashes” of white… what about that @TweetDeck
I don’t really care, because I can tell in 140 characters if I want to read anymore of their rant. I use Twitter3 and it doesn’t allow this. I enjoy the challenge of trying to edit myself to 140 characters. I love some of the abbreviations people have adopted. Twitter is quite entertaining in 140 characters or less.
I have used it on occasion and don’t plan on abusing.
Overall, I agree with Paul Flanigan’s comments.
It has benefits.
I occasionally use twit-longer, but only for a truly long comment with actual information and or link(s). Feel it would be rudely imposing on my followers to expect them to click for a casual conversational tweet that simply needs a few characters pruned.
After clicking on a few deck.ly links I realized it was being used by people too lazy to rephrase for a few characters. I now ignore it as a major waste of my time.
I use tweetdeck and I love it. At a single glance I can see my new followers, read RTs, MTs, and DMs, and check on a saved search. The deck.ly thing helps me when I need like 1or 2 more characters instead of eliminating important points. I don’t think it should be abused to blog status or even go up to 150 characters. It’s overkill. Everyone already leaves twitter when they click on links for anything else, so I hardly doubt it’ll ruin twitter. Tweetdeck runs without clogging up my tabs while I’m online. So deck.ly can be good, needs work, and tweetdeck is constantly improving. I don’t see the big deal here.
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