4 ms·

As a reading medium seeing a bunch of tweets strung together is not fantastic as implemented today. As an authoring medium though, the character constraints fo

by npunt 6y ago

As a reading medium seeing a bunch of tweets strung together is not fantastic as implemented today. As an authoring medium though, the character constraints force you to write succinct points that keep the reader engaged. You can focus your writing just on one point at a time, committing to them when you tweet, and you can stop anytime. If you're struggling with writing longer form pieces a tweet thread is a great on-ramp to get the outline together, which you can later expand into a post. As a conversation medium, it's also nice to be able to focus conversation specifically on a particular point, rather than get jumbled together with a bunch of unrelated comments in the comments section at the end of a post.

nikolay 6y ago
Really? I don't like that Twitter makes me to reword and abbreviate words, just because I'm 2 characters over! Any medium (pun intended) has the concept of paragraphs, but does not typically limit you how long the paragraph is. It could guide you not to go overboard, but to force you to a certain made-up character limit - it's not really acceptable in 2021.
- ganafagol 6y ago
  You need to realize that the character limit was the defining feature of Twitter. There are many platforms where grumpy uncle could dump a wall of text with his views, but nobody was attracted to another one of those. In today's attention economy, limiting expressions of thought was exactly the right thing.
  - nikolay 6y ago
    Maybe you do, but I never want to dump anything! I want to write a paragraph. I can't in many cases, and I need to break English or ruin the wording. So, it's okay for the texting culture, I guess, but not for people who care about what they say and how they say it. I know many people bombard you on IM or Slack with tens of messages instead of writing a single paragraph. You think that's okay? It's a pity if you think so! No wonder people today are suffering from all kinds of attention disorders!

by npunt 6y ago

nikolay 6y ago

Really? I don't like that Twitter makes me to reword and abbreviate words, just because I'm 2 characters over! Any medium (pun intended) has the concept of paragraphs, but does not typically limit you how long the paragraph is. It could guide you not to go overboard, but to force you to a certain made-up character limit - it's not really acceptable in 2021.

ganafagol 6y ago
You need to realize that the character limit was the defining feature of Twitter. There are many platforms where grumpy uncle could dump a wall of text with his views, but nobody was attracted to another one of those. In today's attention economy, limiting expressions of thought was exactly the right thing.
- nikolay 6y ago
  Maybe you do, but I never want to dump anything! I want to write a paragraph. I can't in many cases, and I need to break English or ruin the wording. So, it's okay for the texting culture, I guess, but not for people who care about what they say and how they say it. I know many people bombard you on IM or Slack with tens of messages instead of writing a single paragraph. You think that's okay? It's a pity if you think so! No wonder people today are suffering from all kinds of attention disorders!