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The "Twitter guys" had a reason to make twitter use 140 characters since twitter initially was built solely for use with SMS and they had to deal with SMS's 160
by gabea 16y ago
The "Twitter guys" had a reason to make twitter use 140 characters since twitter initially was built solely for use with SMS and they had to deal with SMS's 160 character limit. 140 for the tweet and 20 for your twitter handle. As others have stated 50 is an arbitrary number.
- jasongullickson 16y ago"We chose 50 based on the research of Oxford Professor of Evolutionary Psychology Robin Dunbar, who has long suggested that 150 is the maximum number of social relationships that the human brain can sustain at any given time. Dunbar’s research also shows that personal relationships tend to expand in factors of roughly 3. So while we may have 5 people whom we consider to be our closest friends, and 20 whom we maintain regular contact with, 50 is roughly the outer boundary of our personal networks. These are the people we trust, whom we are building trust with, and whom we consider to be the most important and valued people in our lives."