When rumours emerged yesterday that Twitter was considering dropping its 140-character limit for tweets in favour of 10,000 characters, share prices plummeted and Twitter users revolted.
https://twitter.com/markhoppus/status/684471435612426240
https://twitter.com/joshuatopolsky/status/684421885917032450
I'm looking forward to not reading your future 3 page tweets.
— Ramp Capital (@RampCapitalLLC) January 5, 2016
Now, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has spoken out about the controversial move, effectively confirming the rumour. In a tweet, Dorsey claims that, by considering an increased character limit, Twitter is effectively providing users the means to bypass the means by which he conveys his very message: a screencap of text that exceeds 140 characters.
“At its core Twitter is public messaging. A simple way to say something, to anyone, that everyone on the world can see instantly.
We didn’t start Twitter with a 140 character restriction. We added that early on to fit into a single SMS message (160 characters).
It’s become a beautiful constraint, and I love it! It inspires creativity and brevity. And a sense of speed. We will never lose that feeling.
We’ve spent a lot of time observing what people are doing on Twitter, and we see them taking screenshots of text and tweeting it.
Instead, what if that text…was actually text? Text that could be searched. Text that could be highlighted. That’s more utility and power.
What makes Twitter, Twitter is its fast, public, live conversational nature. We will always work to strengthen that. For every person around the world, in every language!
And by focusing on conversation and messaging, the majority of tweets will always be short and sweet and conversational!
We’re not going to be shy about building more utility and power into Twitter for people. As long as it’s consistent with what people want to do, we’re going to explore it.
And as I said at #flight, if we decide to ship what we explore, we’re telling developers well in advance, so they can prepare accordingly.
(Also: I love tweetstorms! Those won’t go away.)”
Does Twitter risk abandoning its identity by losing the 140-character limit? Or has the traditional tweet had its day?
