I think each entry is supposed to be tweet-sized, and it's supposed to be read as a sequence of tweets (numbered so that Twitter's web site doesn't mess it up).
Oh my God.
That's quite possibly the worst reason to divide up a paragraph that I've ever heard.
Even this is an understatement. I would really have loved to read it in paragraph format. As a numbered list it got tiring.
Yep, you're right. From the about section: "A weekly dose of breaking-smart ideas for individuals and organizations based on ongoing research. In tweetstorm form."
I thought so too, but I measured one of the paragraphs at 210 characters. Which can mean one of two things. Hopefully, it's unrelated to Twitter and there's another perfectly good explanation. Alternatively, it's inspired by Twitter, but was never actually Tweeted. It's a self-imposition of the twitter style, which feels both disingenuous and in poor taste.
it's a fairly common style, when you want to indicate that this is a string of thoughts rather than an essay. the first time I remember noticing it explicitly in techblog writing was "the cluetrain manifesto", but I'm pretty sure it was already prevalent when that came out
I got a very strong Wittgensteinian vibe from the structure, which I'm guessing was their goal.