Character building? Twitterati spurn idea of Twitter 10K, say save it for ‘War and Peace’
The global Twitterati have widely decried a reported plan by the microblogging site to blow out its famous 140-character length limit on messages to as much as 10,000 characters.
The plan, first reported by technology news site Re/code late on Tuesday, sparked huge traffic on the hashtag #Twitter10k, with most of the posts there pleading for Twitter not to lift its long-standing 140-character limit.
“Dear Twitter, Let's not,” wrote Lab Girl (@LeanN_Mean) in a typically concise post.
Another Twitter user, Carl Bövis(@CarlBovis_AFC) tweeted: “10,000 characters Twitter?!! If I wanted to read War and bloody peace I'd ditch my phone and go to a library!”
CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey telegraphed Twitter’s intentions in a tweet posted Tuesday after Re/Code reported the company is exploring increasing its limits on text to as many as 10,000 characters.
Dorsey didn’t directly address the Re/Code report that cited unnamed sources, but he made it clear that Twitter isn’t wedded to the 140-character limit. He illustrated his point by posting a screenshot of a text consisting of 1,325 characters.
If Twitter were to allow tweets to span 10,000 characters, it could produce 1,700-word dissertations, based on the size of Dorsey’s extended post.
San Francisco-based Twitter Inc declined to comment on its plans.
In his message, Dorsey wrote that Twitter has already noticed that many of its roughly 300 million users already have been including screenshots of lengthy texts in their tweets. He indicated Twitter is examining ways to give people more room to express themselves without polluting the service with gasbags.
Imposing some restraint “inspires creativity and brevity. And a sense of speed. We will never lose that feeling,” Dorsey pledged.
At the same time, Dorsey said Twitter isn’t “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.”
Many users groaned that longer posts would make Twitter too similar to arch-competitor Facebook.
Giridharan (@imchampgiri) tweeted: “I don't want to read novels here, @twitter. Facebook's already the place for that. #Twitter10k”
Social media sentiment towards Twitter was at positive 20 per cent on Wednesday - meaning there are 20 per cent more positive tweets than negative ones mentioning Twitter - after falling to negative territory a day earlier when the news first broke.
Despite the recovery, it was a significant fall from the 70 per cent positive sentiment rating it had earlier in the year, according to Thomson Reuters social media sentiment engine.
Dorsey helped invent Twitter in 2006 and imposed a 140-character limit on messages so the service would be easy to use on cellphones that had 160-character limits on texts at that time.
Those texting limits on phones faded away several years ago as the advent of smartphones enabled people to use other Internet messaging services, making Twitter’s restrictions look increasingly antiquated.
Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter believes an increased limit on tweets would be a “good, baby step” to attracting more users to Twitter and believes it could be done without alienating the service’s current audience. One way to make an increased limit less obnoxious would be to only show a limited amount of text in users’ feeds and then leave it to each individual to click on a button to see more.
“Twitter is an afterthought in social media right now,” Pachter said. “They need to do something to drive more usage of the service. If people start using the service more frequently, other users will come join in, too.”
After a long streak of robust growth that turned it into one of the Internet’s hottest companies, Twitter’s growth has slowed dramatically during the past year-and-half to leave it scrambling to catch up with social networking leader Facebook and its 1.5 billion users.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
