• Financial Times, Friday, January 28, 2011 2:28 PM

Social sacrilege! Software company Tweetdeck just debuted a new service that will let users post Twitter updates longer than 140 characters. According to the Financial Times the new Deck.ly service is part of a broader strategy on the part of Tweetdeck "to ease its dependence on Twitter and become a greater platform in itself." Now, users of Tweetdeck's desktop, Chrome and mobile apps will be able to read these longer posts seamlessly within the app. Iain Dodsworth, founder and chief executive, tells FT.com that users have been "very vocal" in demanding such a service.

"From day one [of Tweetdeck], it was one of the things almost everyone was screaming about," says 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 ... But we are tailoring to an audience that wants functionality the general user of Twitter doesn't care about." For users of Twitter's own service or other related apps, truncated Deck.ly posts will be readable in full via links to a dedicated website.

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