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Comment by ldong | Hacker News Reader

The beauty of twitter is to tweet with concise messages. I'd be disappointed if this 140 characters restriction got removed.

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I find it quite frustrating. I can easily say what I want on other platforms because I can write what I need to without worrying about every single word.

Twitter makes me stop and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and finally get something that fits in 140 and makes sense for the most part after the third read if you understand me and all the context surrounding the thing I said.

I suppose it's at least partially generational for me but it seems so inelegant. Like we're in a global bit shortage.

I mostly disagree. Sure, I've been frustrated at times when I can't express an idea in 140 characters, but in general, I think the limitation is a benefit. As a creator, it makes me distill my tweet to the purest essence of what I'm trying to say, and as a consumer, it lets me scan through my timeline quickly.

Also, there's nothing stopping people from tweeting an idea and including a link to a blog/gist/whatever where they add more context.

And if Twitter does expand the limit, I hope they do it in a way that is essentially a structured version of a link to something else. For example, keep the 140 character limit, but also let people attach a longer note – up to, say, 5000 characters, maybe with simple Markdown formatting. Support it in all official clients and give 3rd-party clients a way to support it too.

I have no problem with them expanding the limit as long as I can still scroll through my timeline, seeing 140-max tweets with an option to click on one to see the expanded version, without leaving my Twitter client or loading a whole webpage. A worse option would be to just show the first 140 characters of a longer note. I think there's value in forcing people to be concise, but I also get that there's value in letting people post longer messages and keeping all of that content in-network.

This long comment is ~1,360 characters.

> Sure, I've been frustrated at times when I can't express an idea in 140 characters, but in general, I think the limitation is a benefit.

Doesn't that lead to a tendency for low quality content (content that can be consumed in a few seconds, like animated gifs, quotes, etc)? I usually want to read in-depth articles and editorials, or thoughtful comment threads.

Yeah, fair point. It's nearly impossible to explore a big, high-quality idea on Twitter, but I personally use it mostly as a discovery tool, not a discussion or exploration tool.

Based on the people I follow, I get exposed to a lot of news and ideas I might have otherwise missed, but I don't need or want Twitter to be the place where I dig in for more details. I'm fine clicking a link or Googling something if I think it's interesting enough to warrant further investigation.

I guess my main concern is that if Twitter tries to be all things to all people it's going to lose its special utility as a discovery engine. In other words, I don't want Twitter to become Facebook or a glorified RSS reader. For me, Twitter is the best source for breaking news and ideas ignored by mainstream media, sprinkled with tidbits from friends I know IRL.

In general, I'm happy with what it is now, perhaps with some better controls for blocking and preventing abuse. If they can find a way to keep the concise sharing/discovery aspect while integrating longer content, I'm cool with that – albeit a bit skeptical.

This discussion sorely misses people who subscribe to tweets by SMS. Here are a few from my stream. Please feel free to draw your own conclusions:

@MKBHD: From this weekend... #ultimate https://t.co/1bSuvFueee/s/9EwY

m.twitter.com/MKBHD

@woot: $134.99 : Philips BR-30 Hue Starter Pack Bonus Kit https://t.co/X5Thalnvvr/s/JR-S

m.twitter.com/woot

@maryjofoley: There is a new local OneDrive app for Win 10 for PCs and phones available for download. Not just for Insiders: https://t.co/25ADHBXwdY/s/KNYy

@BernieSanders: All over this country, Native Americans have suffered far too much, and for far too long. They deserve a voice. https://t.co/jGqJcNuUOC/s/u4Wc

1/2: @maryjofoley: MS broadening Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection preview: https://t.co/TvE43LrKmZ/s/7ZJh Possibly coming by Q3: https://t.co/e5hilZu 2/2: SoJ/s/-5Fn

1/2: @MicrosoftOEM: RT @majornelson: Hey #SanFrancisco: I'll be there this Saturday to help open the new @Razer store. If you are in the area stop by https://t 2/2: .co/InwMnkn6xh/s/IIVm

True. I never think about the SMS angle, which of course was the original need for the limitation.

Finding the core of an idea always takes more time than writing a wall of text. But in a world where a message is read much more often than it's written it makes no sense to offload this cost onto the reader.

He said, in 209 characters.

You need to remove all nuance to fit any reasonably complex idea in 140 characters . And so we're left with soundbites and absolutes, the backbone of all good discussions!

We are finally truly in the age of the soundbite. Lucky us?

I feel really stupid when I try to read tweets because half the time I can't figure out what it actually being said because either there is context missing or there are odd abbreviations... or idk... :(

It doesn't matter that you find it frustrating. It matters that by forcing you to be concise twitter improves the reader experience.

Twitter is optimized for readers, not writers.

Twitter is optimized for superficial reading. Some ideas are more complicated than a one-liner.

Yes. Totally fair point.

For those you could write a normal blogpost and tweet the url and a 140 character -len(url) abstract.

> Twitter is optimized for readers,

Twitter is optimized for SMS.

> Twitter is optimized for readers, not writers.

For a certain kind of reader.

Isn't the solution to that not using Twitter? If you want Facebook/Google+/... you know where to find them; the 140-char thing is the whole point of Twitter.

It's not a bit shortage, it's an attention shortage.

Concision is Twitter's only real point of differentiation. If they let people post blog posts, then it becomes identical to any other social blogging service. Why would they want to do that?

> Concision is Twitter's only real point of differentiation.

Really, the size is an artifact of the early importance of SMS as a mechanism for Twitter. If SMS isn't important to Twitter anymore, I can see why it makes sense to reconsider the limit.

Even if concision is a positive differentiator, there's no reason a limit based on SMS's limitations must be treated as unalterable.

Restrictions are not always good even if the ultimate goal is concise messages. It's hard finding anyone's twitter feed nowadays where people are not getting around the character limit by including screenshots of text. It's EVERYWHERE and it's not easily indexed to be searched.

They have to increase the limit otherwise people will get tired of using the workarounds (because, let's face it, it's practically impossible to have any kind of meaningful conversation at 140 characters at a time). It won't be to 5,000 but I would be surprised if they don't eventually go up to, say, 500 max.

that beauty has turned tweets into incomprehensible multitweets and images of text.

what i don't understand is why they haven't built long-form notes that can be inserted into a tweet, just like images can be inserted.

There were things like Tweet Longer, and TwitPic (before Twitter had images) and lots of other little services that built on top of Twitter.

Twitter then started doing a lot of that stuff on its own and tried to kill off the other services (3rd party clients like Falcon Pro, TwitPic, etc.)

What was once a beautiful ecosystem to support this interesting 140 character thing got gobbled back up by a company that realized it needed to monetize.

I expected them to display the first 140 characters or so then have longer content expand upon tapping into the tweet once they started introducing those cards into the tweets.

Now that is a good idea!

if you include an image the limit is 120.

As a URL is some redirect service, I believe that drops the limit by 12 per url.

The 140 limit is not being removed

Agreed. This is a bad decision. Its always interesting to see how language and thought process changes when limited by the amount you can say.

If you are going include a link then you should be penalized since links are expensive tax for the readers.

Twitter's beauty was that it was easy to predict your mental tax you are going to pay for reading a tweet. Now its unpredictable.

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