Tweetdeck, the software for social-media ‘power users’, is today unveiling Deck.ly, the latest strand of its plan to ease its dependence on Twitter and become a greater platform in itself.
At a basic level, Deck.ly allows Tweetdeck users to post Twitter updates longer than 140 characters.
Iain Dodsworth, founder and chief executive, says users have been “very vocal” in demanding this heretical feature. Users of Tweetdeck’s desktop, Chrome and mobile apps will be able to read these verbose posts seamlessly within the app. Software updates will be pushed out on Monday after some testing this afternoon, with Facebook support coming further down the line.
For those using the regular Twitter website or other apps, truncated Deck.ly posts will be readable in full via links to a dedicated website.
There is somewhat arbitrary 0.5m character limit – Mr Dodsworth says that they have been stress-testing it using the book of Genesis. All the posts are stored in Tweetdeck’s servers, which means they can be searchable, and Mr Dodsworth plans to build a Deck.ly homepage showing trends and popular posts. It could also evolve into a very basic blogging platform, with customisable fonts and so forth.
“From day one [of Tweetdeck], it was one of the things almost everyone was screaming about,” says Mr Dodsworth. “I’ve been very protective of the fact that [140 characters] is a platform limitation of the services we sit on top of and we have to have an element of respect for that. Going around that core tenet of Twitter could be a sensitive move. We don’t know how they feel about it. But we are tailoring to an audience that wants functionality the general user of Twitter doesn’t care about.”
Because Tweetdeck users will get a seamless experience from Deck.ly, Mr Dodsworth hopes that will drive more people to use its apps. For those reading on the web page, there will be ads, eventually targeted to be relevant to the content if the site becomes popular.
To some extent, Deck.ly sees Tweetdeck push back a little against Twitter, which has become less friendly towards third-party apps and increased the focus on its own site.
“Let’s be honest – we are competing with Twitter on a daily basis,” Mr Dodsworth says. “We are fighting for the people that use the same service. Our users are a higher level and they want more – those are people that Twitter doesn’t want to compete for.”
But he adds that they continue to cooperate too: “We talk to Twitter pretty much every week anyway.”
This good-natured competition doesn’t seem to have halted Tweetdeck’s progress. It doesn’t reveal active users but has had “well over” 20m desktop downloads to date, with 2.5m on the iOS apps, which are in the process of a complete redesign.
The British start-up scored quite a coup last month by becoming the first developer outside the US to be on the Chrome web app store at launch. This browser-based version of the software is designed for those in offices where social-media addicts/enthusiasts struggle to get permission from their IT department to install desktop software. “Chromedeck” is currently the third most popular app on the Chrome Web Store, behind a couple of games but ahead of Google Books, Gmail and the New York Times.
“That is where we are putting a lot of our effort from a desktop perspective,” says Mr Dodsworth.
Meanwhile, efforts continue to monetise that large userbase. Tweetdeck is considering adding a new “sponsored content” column to its desktop app (which is free). “So if you want everything on the Super Bowl, you could add a sponsored channel,” Mr Dodsworth says. “We are playing with those ideas and talking to a few people. Are there interesting ways of getting content- or column-based advertising, because that is what the Tweetdeck audience are comfortable with?”
Here’s a short interview I did with Mr Dodsworth at the Chromedeck launch event on London’s glittering Silicon Roundabout last month.
