[lux]

Another option would be to turn lengthier posts into cards. Uses existing Twitter concepts, doesn't change anything for existing users, lets people express more complex ideas. Seems like an easy change and a big win for everyone.

[a_shane]

I assume that this is what's going to happen. While I'm a bit nervous about this whole "10,000 char" thing, it would totally destroy their current user experience and make Twitter unreadable if they actually implemented it in your feed.

Still, I don't quite know if I like that idea. I guess we'll see.

[lux]

Totally. There's no way they'll dump 10,000 character posts into your feed without providing a summary and read more link. That would destroy the experience on any social network, which is why Facebook already summarizes lengthy posts automatically. A tweet-sized summary would make everyone's complaints about this a total non-issue.

For reference, here's what 10,000 characters looks like:

http://pastebin.com/vNQ0CSMu

In figuring itself out now, Twitter's real problem that its existing users haven't had to experience any real degree of change for a long time. Facebook was kind of smart to "move fast and break things" and ignore the complaints from people who don't want to have to learn new ways of doing things :P