Use the Twitter Direct Message API for direct messages
Currently, sending direct messages is dangerous and more limited than it needs to be.
Requiring the operator to leave the D USERNAME part in place presents a situation where an inexperienced user could accidentally post a potentially harmful or embarrassing comment to the public stream (happened to us!)
It also means that you can't use the full 140 characters for the direct message, something that using the dedicated (direct_messages/new) API allows.
Please consider using the native DM API for direct messages, preferably along with a change in the colour of the input box to indicate that the message is private.
Jason Birch
shared this idea
This was implemented on June 2011, and is now a requirement for all services that utilize Twitter’s API for DMs.
2 comments
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David T
commented
OK, maybe I'm missing something then, but when I click on DM in Hootsuite, it puts
"d [username]" in the status window, and my message length is therefore 140-[2+length of username]. How can I send a user a direct message like I can via Twitter: i.e. using the full 140 characters. As a test, if I post "d [username] [140 character message]", Hootsuite is abbreviating teh message length, so somewhere along the line something isn't working even if on the backend you're using the latest API. -
David T
commented
Completely agree; I'm not sure why this hasn't been implemented as it's basic API functionality. As it stands we don't get the full 140 characters.
