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The 140 character limit was so that a tweet could fit in to an SMS message (160 characters) and have enough room left over to address it to @someone. http://en
by goatforce5 13y ago
The 140 character limit was so that a tweet could fit in to an SMS message (160 characters) and have enough room left over to address it to @someone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Format http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Format
- mkehrt 13y agoNot true. GSM texts are encoded in a 7-bit scheme, and twitter started using 8 bit encodings. 7 * 160 = 8 * 140.
- jrabone 13y agoIndeed; and the bit-packing code to convert 8 7-bit characters to 7 octets is a PITA (I wrote a Java SMS server)
- marcosdumay 13y agoAnd the SMS messages are limited by the size of the blocks of the first digital celular networks, that got that size because it was enough to fit a "phone #1111-1111, ring" message. So, in no anybody tought abut what kind of textual content would fit that size. Or, in other words, it's arbitrary.
- dsuth 13y agoAnd what do we have now? Most people use iMessages or similar, which have arbitrary lengths, and allow much more descriptive and sensible messages. But not on twitter, where it's seen as some kind of hipster badge to be able to reword a thought into a 140 character haiku. It's a bit silly.