We all know the frustration: you have the perfect joke or insight to tweet out to the world, but you run out of space when you go to write i
Darn it! Oh…wait, this isn’t Twitter. Well, soon enough lack of characters might not be a problem, because the social media site has announced that they are testing an increase in the maximum number of characters per tweet, from 140 to 280.
https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/912783930431905797
On their official blog, Twitter has said that a small group of randomly chosen users are now trying out a new, extra-large edition with twice as much available space per tweet. While this would seem to run counter to what makes the service appealing–that it forces users to rely on brevity (“the soul of wit”) to communicate their ideas–they say it’s because in some languages “you can convey about double the amount of information in one character as you can in many other languages, like English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French.”
They even shared a fancy graph that shows nine percent of tweets in English use the maximum number of available characters, compared to just 0.4 percent of tweets in Japan. Some might argue that instead of fundamentally changing the very nature of their popular site it would be wiser to decrease the number of characters available for Japanese, Chinese, and Korean speakers, the only three languages not affected by this.
And Twitter users seem to agree.
A platform that was kinda hate-y
With no edits after it was too late-y
Decided with ease
They’d fix none of these
And instead gave us 280— Mark Brooks (@markbrooks) September 26, 2017
if i wanted to see 280 characters i don't care about i'd just watch the game of the thrones
— Patrick (@PrayForPatrick) September 26, 2017
https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/912800215987396610
Twitter is doubling tweet length to 280 characters. No one has ever read a tweet and thought "please, go on…"
— Mark Critch (@markcritch) September 26, 2017
is this 280 character thing a trick to distract us from some huge scandal, has trump killed the queen or banned cheese or something
— Tom Freeman (@SnoozeInBrief) September 26, 2017
Now when I write a 280-character tweet everyone will wonder, couldn't she have said this in 140-characters? And the answer will be
— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) September 26, 2017
It's kind of amazing that 280 is like just long enough that it registers as a wall of text that I'm not going to read.
— John Robie 🇺🇲 (@JRobie_1970) September 26, 2017
https://twitter.com/alexblagg/status/912801453311270913
https://twitter.com/memorie_holiday/status/912801970330595329
Twitter bumping up the characters to 280 my feed is going to turn into a Library.
— Jack🇧🇷 (@Jack_Rogers97) September 26, 2017
Here's @Twitter before and after the 280 character limit. pic.twitter.com/xXSLWt4COb
— Bill (@katjakaos) September 26, 2017
A 280 character limit? pic.twitter.com/TkvHRngmam
— Matt Fowler (@TheMattFowler) September 26, 2017
They won’t give us an edit button, but they’ll give us more room to make twice as many grammar and spelling mistakes, while making it easier for strangers to yell at us for our movie opinions?
“Bold move, Cotton.”
Or maybe Twitter would prefer I say: “‘Bold move, Cotton.’ That is a line from the movie Dodgeball, and it is often used to mean something seems like a bad idea. It’s funny because the character who says it isn’t very smart, but sincerely wants to see if the terrible idea will work out anyway. HA!”
Is that better? What do you think? Is the character increase a good idea or not? Tell us what you think in the comments below, and use as many characters as you’d like.
Featured Image: Twitter
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