Originally written in 2017 for Bigar Creative
It’s official, Twitter has officially doubled its character limit and people are mixed with their emotions on the matter. For those who don’t know, the 140 Twitter character limit was created to fit in an early SMS text message, which had a limit of 160. It soon became Twitter’s claim to fame: short and sweet. As the internet expanded, so did room for lengthy rants. In the wake of the Facebook status revamp, the creations of blogs, Reddit Posts and Xanga, Twitter became the only place where straight, to the point posts could exist.
When you consider the reason for the limit, it makes those 140 characters feel archaic. When you think about the changes the internet has seen since 2007, it's kind of a wonder that the limit stuck so steadfastly. Not only have we gotten rid of T9, we’ve created phones with screens big enough to read a full novel. Not only that, but Twitter was created as a forum for free flowing conversations, something we haven’t used less than 140 characters for in years.
But for whatever reason, die hard Twitter users aren't giving up on their abilities to fit it all in to 140 characters. Twitter user @Caitlin__Kelly rose to infamy after she shortened Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s own tweet announcing the increased 280 character limit to, you guessed it, 140 characters.
“This is a small change, but a big move for us,” Dorsey wrote. “140 was an arbitrary choice
based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence!”
Kelly’s shortened tweet showed the Twitter world that while things can change, they don’t have to. In a test run by twitter, only nine percent of tweets ran up against the 140-character limit and a mere one percent ran up against the 280-character test. So despite predictions that Twitter will now be flooded with clutter and lose what people love it for, in most cases, it is probable that people will not see an increase in their tweets at all.
Either way, in the online world, Twitter is losing traction and getting their name in the news could be what the company needs to boost their site, whether people like it or not. As they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity; right?
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