Once again, the news media is reporting that Twitter may be reconsidering
its 140 character limit:
Twitter Inc. may be preparing to raise its character limit to the
thousands from the current 140 for tweets, a person with knowledge of the
matter said.
The maximum number of characters in a post could be raised to as much as
10,000, said the person, who asked not be identified as the changes haven’t
been decided. A tweet that long would be roughly equal to a 20-minute speech.
The number could be half that, depending on how users respond to trials, the
person said.
I
think there is a decent case that 140 characters is too confining, but 10,000
characters (equivalent to 10,000/5=2000
words) would be a very significant change, and probably an excessive change. According to research, about 1500 to 2000
words is optimal for a blog, so Twitter would be heading into all-out blog
territory with a change like that. Which
seems excessive.
Here’s
are a few changes that I think would help bridge the 140 character limit issue
without going overboard:
·
Allow
one link, without it counting toward the
140 character limit. A lot of tweets are
basically meant to drive people to blogs or other websites anyway, so this
change would facilitate that, allowing the tweet to be a more effective lead-in
to the blog or website. It would also
make the use of Bitly-type shortening unnecessary. A lot of people don’t like being directed to
“mystery-meat” URLs, anyway.
·
Allow
one image (reasonably compressed), without it counting toward the 140 character
limit. Twitter is much more visually
oriented now, so that would just acknowledge that fact.
·
Allow
two hashtags, without them counting toward the 140 charater limit. Hashtags are also a fact of life on Twitter,
so this change would acknowledge that reality.
·
Then,
consider raising the character limit, to perhaps 500 characters, equivalent to
100 words. That would allow for the
expression of more complex ideas, without losing the value of enforcing brevity
and clarity on the user.
I think the above changes would also help Twitter in its
efforts to increase signups and monetize the service. It would maintain Twitter’s role as a
short-form communication tool for small communities, but also acknowledge its
role as a blog and website driver for larger communities and businesses.
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And here’s an XKCD comic, elaborating on the peculiar
nature of Twitter, in a very Twitter-like manner:
This comic plays
off of an old shaving cream product's Burma-Shave advertising campaign employed
on American highways from 1925 to 1963. These ads used short poems, each line
arranged sequentially on a sign along a highway, the last line always being
"Burma Shave", the name of the shaving cream. Originally these ads
only described the product, but others included driving safety messages. Twitter is a messaging service where your
messages are restricted in length, so to get a longer easay sent you will need
to break it up in smaller fragments — like the Burma-Shave messages.
=============================================
And
you should think about going hiking this coming year, to get away from social
media for a while. :)
The Juan de Fuca Marine Trail, on the
west coast of Canada is an excellent choice, as you will discover after reading
this fascinating book (about 100 Kindle normalized
pages for only $0.99) :
Amazon
U.S. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013VKEXV2
Amazon
Canada http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B013VKEXV2
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