280 characters on Twitter
Users have been pushing for it and in the end the administration of Twitter could not stand their ground and declared that they are trying to increase the character limit of a tweet from 140 to 280.
They announced their decision in a tweet and also posted a blog entry about it, saying, “We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, so we’re doing something new: we’re going to try out a longer limit, 280 characters, in languages impacted by cramming [which is all except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean].”
The blog entry is claiming that in 140 characters languages like Japanese, Chinese and Korean can fit in much more to say than other languages and that it was not fair.
I am very against this increase and I believe that the real reason why Twitter cannot realize its full potential is far from the tweet size. I don’t want longer tweets; I want a platform without trolls, I want a platform that supports current content technologies.
One-hundred-and-forty characters were the backbone of everything that Twitter stood for. It became a cultural phenomenon. In many other institutions, people began to use 140 characters as a measure of how well you understood a subject. If you cannot write down what the subject is in 140 characters then it means that you have not understood it at all.
Naturally, there are many users who started complaining and making fun of this decision as soon as they read about it. A few of them are below:
“The 280-character limit is a terrible idea. The whole beauty of Twitter is that it forces you to express your ideas concisely.”
“Close your eyes. Imagine Trump using Twitter. Now imagine Trump using Twitter with 280 characters. Now close Twitter.”
“True strength is knowing u have the ability to tweet 280 characters, but the wisdom & restraint to only tweet 140.”
“I’m looking forward to 280 characters and all the extra context and nuance that Trump will be able to provide.”
And this is one of the first tweets with 280 characters:
“i can’t believe i have 280 characters... what do i do with this power. theres still so much space left. what do i even say. i dont think in such long sentences normally. are people still even reading? this is ridiculous but exciting at the same time. send help. THE TING GO SKRRR P.”
And here is another:
“i’m excited about this 280 character limit because now i can cram MORE into my tweets. for instance, did you know i love david bowie? thanks to this lovely update, i can now tweet about him more extensively and descriptively. i am so excited about this development thanks twitter.”