Off topic, but those messages are sure a lot longer than 140 characters in translated form. I suppose that if app.net wants to know whether its longer character count limit is a good idea, it can just look to China.
Chinese Twitter users live in a density 2x to 8x their English counterparts; here's why
http://pugs.blogs.com/audrey/2009/10/our-paroqial-fermament-...
> I'm no expert but doesn't chinese have single symbols/words that when translated turn into multiple words.
Often more like one Chinese character per Chinese word. But you also have compound words of multiple characters, I believe. And then, translation to English isn't word for word, either.