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Okay, I'm gonna be honest here: Am I the only one who doesn't get all the complaints about an expanded character limit? Cause at the end of the day, many Twit

by CM30 9y ago

Okay, I'm gonna be honest here: Am I the only one who doesn't get all the complaints about an expanded character limit? Cause at the end of the day, many Twitter alternatives have far more than 140 characters available for posts. Mastodon has 500 by default, Gab has 300 characters and App.net allowed 256 characters per post before it closed down. Absolutely none of those sites or services has been worse off thanks to the higher character limit, nor has it hurt the microblogging feel in general. So why are people so stressed out over Twitter having a higher amount now?

gilrain 9y ago
> Absolutely none of those sites or services has been worse off thanks to the higher character limit, nor has it hurt the microblogging feel in general. > So why are people so stressed out over Twitter having a higher amount now? The answer to your question is that they disagree with your preceding statement.
- CM30 9y ago
  I've seen a fair bit of criticism about said services in regards to the content, but never the character limit. Can someone who dislikes the limit on Mastodon or Gab explain why here?
InclinedPlane 9y ago
Twitter has a lot of problems, the 140 character limit was not even in the top 5. That's why people are annoyed. Twitter's house is on fire with cougars eating people in the backyard and people dying of cholera in the front yard, now the owners rush back from vacation in a big white van... only to open it up and reveal a bunch of pink plastic flamingos, which they proceed to use to decorate the yard (in between cholera corpses). It's mystifying and infuriating.
- onlyfortyfive 9y ago
  Well, the 140 character may not be a problem for existing users, but it’s also a great reason not to use twitter if you don’t have a desire to cram arbitrary thoughts into arbitrary formats.... what kind of discussion can you have in that medium? Not a very meaningful one.... It’s certainly amusing to see people get angry that the experience is less stressful. Just saying—it seems pretty obvious this is at least in part to increase attractiveness of actually using the platform. The content certainly ain’t gonna do the trick. Or to put it another way, the last person to see how shitty it is is someone who already uses the site.
- kuschku 9y ago
  For users of some non-english languages, the 140 character limit was a lot more problematic than anything else. If you try even comparing German text with english or even japanese on twitter, you'll notice one big issue immediately: You can barely put 3 German words into a tweet, while Japanese can fit an entire novel in.
- mypalmike 9y ago
  Twitter has numerous engineering teams. The pink flamingo team had an easier task than the ones putting out fires, slaying cougars, and curing cholera.
  - InclinedPlane 9y ago
    1: Apply water until fire is out. 2: Build a fence. 3: Treat acute cases with rehydration therapy, keep your poop out of your drinking water. None of these are complicated. But they do require consistent application of effort until the problem is solved.
    - dreamcompiler 9y ago
      Several of them might require the expenditure of money (or a temporary decrease in revenue) and such solutions are difficult because they make investors nervous.
- dreamcompiler 9y ago
  Love the analogies. All of Twitter's problems stem from its being taken over by marketing wonks who drove out the techies. This led to naïve attempts at monetization (such as closing off the API), and naïve monetization is always user-hostile.
Simon_says 9y ago
I think it shows that Twitter doesn't know why it became successful. 140 characters was an accident of technology, but Twitter previously didn't want to mess with their special sauce.
- cisanti 9y ago
  Sometimes I start to believe in some sort of conspiracy that all the people working in media were the early investors and now they push the service 24/7 for the stock price :)) it's amazing how much publicity they get.
richdougherty 9y ago
I personally like the way Twitter encourages brevity. I think the constraint of 140 characters leads to more thoughtful, creative expression. So it's really an aesthetic thing for me. But I don't have an argument with people who want more. Having more characters will making tweeting easier and more practical. It's really a decision for Twitter to make - do they prioritise aesthetics or utility?
- wpietri 9y ago
  Yeah, I'm a big fan of the brevity. For me who I follow is about breadth, and the longer people's tweets are, the fewer I can follow. I also think a lot of the >140 tweets I see could easily be written in 140 if the writer worked a little harder. As this edit of Jack's first 280-character tweet conveys well: https://twitter.com/caitlin__kelly/status/912795950476857344/photo/1 https://twitter.com/caitlin__kelly/status/912795950476857344...
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    It's a love/hate thing. I see your edit and it looks like arbitrary whittling down of the original which was already fine, if not superior.
    - wpietri 9y ago
      I see you're not much of a Twitter user, so I can see how you might not be sensitive to the difference. But for me, the 140 character limit has been a great source of writing discipline, getting me to squeeze a point to its essence. If the 280-character version is only arguably better than the 140-character one, then it's circa half as efficient, both in terms of character count and the reader's time. Jack's post was sloppy writing. And that's really my beef with this change. Twitter is seeking something easy to measure -- engagement of marginal writers -- but willing to sacrifice things that are harder to measure, like reader burden and tweet quality. Worse, this still won't solve the "need to post more text" problem; you can find a zillion historical examples of people needing more than 280 characters. Thus the unique institution of a tweetstorm, where people had to distill their thinking into a linked set of short, punchy sentences. Thus the less appealing practice of posting an image of text. Thus people being inspired to write longer posts elsewhere and then respond with a well-phrased tweet and a link. I think Twitter would have been far better served to offer text attachments equivalent to image attachments, basically adding a real blogging feature to their existing microblogging platform.
Bromskloss 9y ago
> So why are people so stressed out over Twitter having a higher amount now? I will have to get myself one of them new, fancy phones that can string together multiple SMSes now, if I want to keep up with the other kids!
- katastic 9y ago
  Even old feature/flip phones supported breaking SMS into multiple messages. I would use them all the time.
  - Bromskloss 9y ago
    You caught me exaggerating! :-) My phone can actually put together 3 messages. (Not that I use Twitter.)
    - katastic 9y ago
      Yeah, IIRC, I was actually on your side / making a light-hearted joke/factoid. That my old phone could handle larger messages than Twitter is pretty sad for Twitter. I actually just saw a news article that a guy is saying "Twitter enabled larger character lengths... so nazis could spread their propoganda without as much split tweets." and I was like "Uhh.... okay there..." We're living in a time where literally nobody can be satisfied with your business decisions and whatever that ONE person is, they'll have a "journalist" platform to spew their crazy ideas to millions of people. Anyhow, have a great day!
zimpenfish 9y ago
> Cause at the end of the day, many Twitter alternatives have far more than 140 characters available for posts. How many of those have more than a trivial handful of users?
- iuguy 9y ago
  On the smaller side, Mastodon: https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ On the larger side, Facebook. You might not think of Facebook as an alternative, but they're in direct competition.
- fwn 9y ago
  As long as the users on the platform are not trivial to each other this should not alter the comparability of those platforms to Twitter. UX wise.
iagooar 9y ago
What I dislike is the whole whining thing. If you don't like the new limit, leave Twitter and create your own platform with blackjack and hookers. People will complain about pretty much every single change.

by CM30 9y ago

gilrain 9y ago

> Absolutely none of those sites or services has been worse off thanks to the higher character limit, nor has it hurt the microblogging feel in general. > So why are people so stressed out over Twitter having a higher amount now? The answer to your question is that they disagree with your preceding statement.

CM30 9y ago
I've seen a fair bit of criticism about said services in regards to the content, but never the character limit. Can someone who dislikes the limit on Mastodon or Gab explain why here?

InclinedPlane 9y ago

Twitter has a lot of problems, the 140 character limit was not even in the top 5. That's why people are annoyed. Twitter's house is on fire with cougars eating people in the backyard and people dying of cholera in the front yard, now the owners rush back from vacation in a big white van... only to open it up and reveal a bunch of pink plastic flamingos, which they proceed to use to decorate the yard (in between cholera corpses). It's mystifying and infuriating.

onlyfortyfive 9y ago
Well, the 140 character may not be a problem for existing users, but it’s also a great reason not to use twitter if you don’t have a desire to cram arbitrary thoughts into arbitrary formats.... what kind of discussion can you have in that medium? Not a very meaningful one.... It’s certainly amusing to see people get angry that the experience is less stressful. Just saying—it seems pretty obvious this is at least in part to increase attractiveness of actually using the platform. The content certainly ain’t gonna do the trick. Or to put it another way, the last person to see how shitty it is is someone who already uses the site.
kuschku 9y ago
For users of some non-english languages, the 140 character limit was a lot more problematic than anything else. If you try even comparing German text with english or even japanese on twitter, you'll notice one big issue immediately: You can barely put 3 German words into a tweet, while Japanese can fit an entire novel in.
mypalmike 9y ago
Twitter has numerous engineering teams. The pink flamingo team had an easier task than the ones putting out fires, slaying cougars, and curing cholera.
- InclinedPlane 9y ago
  1: Apply water until fire is out. 2: Build a fence. 3: Treat acute cases with rehydration therapy, keep your poop out of your drinking water. None of these are complicated. But they do require consistent application of effort until the problem is solved.
  - dreamcompiler 9y ago
    Several of them might require the expenditure of money (or a temporary decrease in revenue) and such solutions are difficult because they make investors nervous.
dreamcompiler 9y ago
Love the analogies. All of Twitter's problems stem from its being taken over by marketing wonks who drove out the techies. This led to naïve attempts at monetization (such as closing off the API), and naïve monetization is always user-hostile.

Simon_says 9y ago

I think it shows that Twitter doesn't know why it became successful. 140 characters was an accident of technology, but Twitter previously didn't want to mess with their special sauce.

cisanti 9y ago
Sometimes I start to believe in some sort of conspiracy that all the people working in media were the early investors and now they push the service 24/7 for the stock price :)) it's amazing how much publicity they get.

richdougherty 9y ago

I personally like the way Twitter encourages brevity. I think the constraint of 140 characters leads to more thoughtful, creative expression. So it's really an aesthetic thing for me. But I don't have an argument with people who want more. Having more characters will making tweeting easier and more practical. It's really a decision for Twitter to make - do they prioritise aesthetics or utility?

wpietri 9y ago
Yeah, I'm a big fan of the brevity. For me who I follow is about breadth, and the longer people's tweets are, the fewer I can follow. I also think a lot of the >140 tweets I see could easily be written in 140 if the writer worked a little harder. As this edit of Jack's first 280-character tweet conveys well: https://twitter.com/caitlin__kelly/status/912795950476857344/photo/1 https://twitter.com/caitlin__kelly/status/912795950476857344...
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  It's a love/hate thing. I see your edit and it looks like arbitrary whittling down of the original which was already fine, if not superior.
  - wpietri 9y ago
    I see you're not much of a Twitter user, so I can see how you might not be sensitive to the difference. But for me, the 140 character limit has been a great source of writing discipline, getting me to squeeze a point to its essence. If the 280-character version is only arguably better than the 140-character one, then it's circa half as efficient, both in terms of character count and the reader's time. Jack's post was sloppy writing. And that's really my beef with this change. Twitter is seeking something easy to measure -- engagement of marginal writers -- but willing to sacrifice things that are harder to measure, like reader burden and tweet quality. Worse, this still won't solve the "need to post more text" problem; you can find a zillion historical examples of people needing more than 280 characters. Thus the unique institution of a tweetstorm, where people had to distill their thinking into a linked set of short, punchy sentences. Thus the less appealing practice of posting an image of text. Thus people being inspired to write longer posts elsewhere and then respond with a well-phrased tweet and a link. I think Twitter would have been far better served to offer text attachments equivalent to image attachments, basically adding a real blogging feature to their existing microblogging platform.

Bromskloss 9y ago

> So why are people so stressed out over Twitter having a higher amount now? I will have to get myself one of them new, fancy phones that can string together multiple SMSes now, if I want to keep up with the other kids!

katastic 9y ago
Even old feature/flip phones supported breaking SMS into multiple messages. I would use them all the time.
- Bromskloss 9y ago
  You caught me exaggerating! :-) My phone can actually put together 3 messages. (Not that I use Twitter.)
  - katastic 9y ago
    Yeah, IIRC, I was actually on your side / making a light-hearted joke/factoid. That my old phone could handle larger messages than Twitter is pretty sad for Twitter. I actually just saw a news article that a guy is saying "Twitter enabled larger character lengths... so nazis could spread their propoganda without as much split tweets." and I was like "Uhh.... okay there..." We're living in a time where literally nobody can be satisfied with your business decisions and whatever that ONE person is, they'll have a "journalist" platform to spew their crazy ideas to millions of people. Anyhow, have a great day!

zimpenfish 9y ago

> Cause at the end of the day, many Twitter alternatives have far more than 140 characters available for posts. How many of those have more than a trivial handful of users?

iuguy 9y ago
On the smaller side, Mastodon: https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ On the larger side, Facebook. You might not think of Facebook as an alternative, but they're in direct competition.
fwn 9y ago
As long as the users on the platform are not trivial to each other this should not alter the comparability of those platforms to Twitter. UX wise.

iagooar 9y ago

What I dislike is the whole whining thing. If you don't like the new limit, leave Twitter and create your own platform with blackjack and hookers. People will complain about pretty much every single change.