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So, I think you don't realize something very important about how people use twitter. Consider, what the typical number of blogs is that people around you might

So, I think you don't realize something very important about how people use twitter. Consider, what the typical number of blogs is that people around you might actually follow - (via RSS or some other means) in the sense that they're subscribed to it, new content appears from time to time, and when an entry appears they see it somewhere at the top of some feed? A feed they have to read through. I would guess the very high end of what might be considered typical would be 50-70 or something. That is a lot of blogs. Now let's compare with twitter. Three years ago, the average twitter user followed 100 accounts.[1] Here is an example of an article giving 55 "must-follow" twitter accounts [2] - a simple article, saying, hey, subscribe to these 55 sources. Can you imagine someone giving you a list of 55 blogs that you simply have to subscribe to, regardless of who you are or what your interests are - for everyone? That to be in touch with the world, you must follow at least these 55 blogs? I can certainly imagine it for tech! But, for everyone? The percentage of world leaders who use twitter is: 80%[3] - outside of the highly reduced format, do you think people care about politics that much? Obama has 68M followers. How many do you think would stick around after even a couple of extended posts? How interesting do you think every last politician is? Because that 68M compares to the total monthly reach of New York Times and all its web presence of on the order of 50 million people. Are people really that interested in not just one, but every last politician's every last statement, than in this highly distilled and reduced form? Twitter works because of the character limit. That's what allows the average user to follow well over a hundred accounts. It's that simple. - [1] this figure was really hard to find, don't know why. http://news.yahoo.com/twitter-statistics-by-the-numbers-153151584.html http://news.yahoo.com/twitter-statistics-by-the-numbers-1531... [2] http://greatist.com/happiness/must-follow-twitter-accounts http://greatist.com/happiness/must-follow-twitter-accounts [3] http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/march-2013-by-the-numbers-a-few-amazing-twitter-stats/2/ http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/march-2013-by-the-num...

yeukhon 11y ago
I don't follow the hype and when I was an active user I would get frustrated with my tweet limiting to so few characters. here is what I had to do: 1. write tweet, fuck, over limit 2. abbrev words, fuck still low on limit 3. remove spaces, fuck still low on limit 4. remove words and punctuations, thinking "fuck so this is what search engine feels like when one stems words", not my tweet is so not English 5. fuck still over limit or incomplete, tweet the first thought, comment on the new tweet with the rest of my story. But why this model? FB has a limit few thousands char limits for status but in practice, only few lines will ever written on most FB statuses. People who manage to write a complete story on FB status have something meaningful to write about.
- logicallee 11y ago
  I guarantee you that your audience wasn't frustrated by the fact that you had to jump through those hoops. You think all those politicians and celebrities and thought leaders don't have trouble fitting things in 140 characters? I'm not being too verbose, but I've just written 292 here. :)
  - dajohnson89 11y ago
    Agreed. And editing is the hardest (but most important) part of writing.
    - SixSigma 11y ago
      Hence the old gag: Sorry this letter is so long, I didn't have much time.
      - alxndr 11y ago
        Blaise Pascal, in 1657: "I have made this [letter] longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter." http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
- rconti 11y ago
  And yet Facebook has vastly better information density on their desktop and mobile sites than Twitter manages. (see my comment elsewhere on this comment thread)

yeukhon 11y ago

I don't follow the hype and when I was an active user I would get frustrated with my tweet limiting to so few characters. here is what I had to do: 1. write tweet, fuck, over limit 2. abbrev words, fuck still low on limit 3. remove spaces, fuck still low on limit 4. remove words and punctuations, thinking "fuck so this is what search engine feels like when one stems words", not my tweet is so not English 5. fuck still over limit or incomplete, tweet the first thought, comment on the new tweet with the rest of my story. But why this model? FB has a limit few thousands char limits for status but in practice, only few lines will ever written on most FB statuses. People who manage to write a complete story on FB status have something meaningful to write about.

logicallee 11y ago
I guarantee you that your audience wasn't frustrated by the fact that you had to jump through those hoops. You think all those politicians and celebrities and thought leaders don't have trouble fitting things in 140 characters? I'm not being too verbose, but I've just written 292 here. :)
- dajohnson89 11y ago
  Agreed. And editing is the hardest (but most important) part of writing.
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    Hence the old gag: Sorry this letter is so long, I didn't have much time.
    - alxndr 11y ago
      Blaise Pascal, in 1657: "I have made this [letter] longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter." http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
rconti 11y ago
And yet Facebook has vastly better information density on their desktop and mobile sites than Twitter manages. (see my comment elsewhere on this comment thread)