4 ms·

Offtopic: This is the first time I'm seeing a post "on" app.net and not "about" app.net

• TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  Might be something to do with people usually not linking to tweets unless they're really notable. And app.net items are effectively just long tweets.
  • diego 14y ago
    Technically this is more like a thread with comments.
    • MiguelHudnandez 14y ago
      Twitter displays threads, as well. See the following tweet as an example: https://twitter.com/tvladeck/status/255775327165505536 https://twitter.com/tvladeck/status/255775327165505536
  • w1ntermute 14y ago
    > And app.net items are effectively just long tweets. App.net doesn't have a limit on message length?
    • sjs382 14y ago
      256 characters, IIRC
      • Evbn 14y ago
        Why? Just to be like twitter, but different, with no comprehension of why the Twitter limit exists?
        • JeremyBanks 14y ago
          Comprehending why the Twitter limit exists should let you comprehend why there's no point for App.net to follow it. The service won't actually be used for "micro-blogging" unless users are constrained by some limit, but 144 is too damn small. Nobody would ever have picked it if they weren't forced to, and these days they aren't. What infinitesimal fraction of modern Twitter users in App.net's target market do you imagine use the service via SMS? The limit a legacy of an irrelevant use case. I'd probably have gone a bit higher than 256 myself (disregarding attachment to powers of two), but it's an improvement.
          • graue 14y ago
            I've been using Tent (https://tent.io https://tent.io) which also adopted 256 characters, and I think it's actually quite generous for statuses. Maybe too much; the nature of microblogging changes when you don't have to be concise. I bet the sweet spot is probably somewhere in 160-200.
            • deleted 14y ago
              [deleted]
            • nikcub 14y ago
              Sticking to 140 would be a good standard for a microblogging standard since it would allow you to syndicate out to Twitter and you could emulate the API and automatically have other apps support that character limit. If you go beyond 140 it is then no longer a microblog post, but rather just an ordinary blog post.
          • w1ntermute 14y ago
            > The service won't actually be used for "micro-blogging" unless users are constrained by some limit, but 144 is too damn small. The funny thing is that in languages like Japanese and Chinese, where one "character" contains a lot more info than one Latin letter, Twitter is used in quite a different way.
          • paulsilver 14y ago
  • joelrunyon 14y ago
    This would make it seem more akin to Google+, right? G+ is linked to around here quite often.
    • jlgreco 14y ago
      Not to be overly harsh, but perhaps the difference is that Google+ is having more things published to it that people actually care about.
      • comex 14y ago
        Well, yeah, but for the obvious reason - tweets are meant to be short and consumed in large numbers, but aren't generally meaty enough for a discussion, while some people are using Google+ as essentially a blogging platform. 140 (or 256) characters is rarely enough for an entire HN discussion, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy reading dozens of tweets at a time to get a sense of what's going on. Actually, many of those tweets have links, so in some sense Twitter competes with HN as a link aggregator, not with Google+ as a primary source.