3 ms·
>Why is exactly 140 still the right length? Why not 145, or 73, or 280? Why are youtube videos mostly 5 to 7 minutes? Why are pop songs 3 minutes long? Why are
by aphextron 10y ago
>Why is exactly 140 still the right length? Why not 145, or 73, or 280?
Why are youtube videos mostly 5 to 7 minutes? Why are pop songs 3 minutes long? Why are sitcoms 30 minutes long?
Forms of expression are defined by their constraints. I think of twitter's relationship to prose as analogous to a haiku.
- Godel_unicode 10y ago> twitter's relationship to prose I think we read very different Twitters :)
- nandemo 10y agoOh, do you read a lot of poetry tweets?
- snowwrestler 10y agoYouTube videos can be as long as you want. Songs can be as long as you want. TV shows can be as long as you want. You think you're arguing the value of constraints, but you're actually arguing that different media formats have different points of cultural optimization. If that's true, then is there any need to enforce an artificial length limit on tweets? If shorter, pithier tweets are better, then most tweets will be short and pithy--naturally.