Twitter Plans to Go Beyond Its 140-Character Limit | Hacker News Reader

Twitter Plans to Go Beyond Its 140-Character Limit

recode.net

43 pointscoloneltcb22 comments

> removing things like links and user handles from the count, multiple sources say

@oh @good @now @i @can @make @almost @arbitrarily @sized @tweets

140 is like two rows of text and it's just perfect if it's only text. Anything more breaks the haiku-like format.

It's the urls and handles that need more space. Remove one url and 4-5 handles from the character count and it's perfect.

Personally, I feel like I need 280 characters to express a simple and complete English-phrased thought. As an example, this comment does not fit within their limit.

>I need 280 characters to express a simple and complete English-phrased thought. For example, this comment doesn't fit in their limit.

The above comment would fit, removes unnecessary words, and gets the same point across. I feel the limit helps people be more brief, although sometimes brevity loses a bit of the human emotion or necessary nuance.

The character limit is pointless nowadays, due to people using 1/n, 2/n, 3/n to chain tweets together. Even Snowden did this today and he just joined Twitter... http://i.imgur.com/MaAX7Io.png

>> remove unnecessary words ... get the same point across

true, but I want to "express" something, not just put words into peoples eyes.

But at twitter The People have made a decision with their feet that they'd rather have neutered brevity than your fully expressed thought.

There's room for a product that is not fully featured, especially one that is intentionally not fully featured. Constraints are often a good thing for art. The novel "Gadsby", written without the letter E, is not the finest point of english literature, but is certainly novel and better for it. Limitations, speaking eloquently, and conveying your message through simple form has an appeal. Reducing the number of long screeds and distilling arguments to concise, short points has appeal.

To quote an old adage: Brevity is the soul of wit.

>>For example, this comment doesn't fit in their limit.

>The above comment would fit,

Yeah, but then you're into "this statement is false" territory ...

They also need to separate out links from the tweet, and into a separate piece of data.

And they really need to allow for editing typos.

This is a typical requirement that blows up on implementation.

How do you deal with retweets?

Example: >I tweet: I love christians @Pontifex

@Pontifex retweets.

Fix "typo": I hate christians @Pontifex

Refresh @Pontifex profile, screenshot ...

Do you notify retweeters that the post was edited and ask for acknowledgement? Do you nullify the retweet? Do you mark it as edited?

You don't do anything. You let the retweeter worry about it.

Not a total solution, but e.g. edited posts/comments on Facebook are clearly marked and have links to a diff.

What happens to the retweet if you delete a tweet? the same should happen if you edit a tweet...

About time. If, back in March 2006, the length of an SMS had been, say, 220 characters, a tweet would've been 200 characters long. There is nothing inherently special about 140.

GSM SMS had a limit on 140 octets. So I guess that is why.

I hope they won't go too far with it. I fear that allowing too long messages will reduce SNR.

It sounds like they're just incorporating their own "TwitLonger" into it.

Hell yes, takin' it to 141. It'll be like the "11" of our generation... Oh, wait.

This is just increasing the tokenization (?) of tweets to waste less characters on tokens.

tldr; 140 characters, just less wasted characters.

A better title would have been "Twitter plans to take on Medium"

When people are posting images of text, you know your product is broken... but in a good way.

Is it just me or is everything starting to converge?

Finally! Now merge with Facebook and all is fine.

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