[noelwelsh]

It seems that Twitter execs believe the magic of Twitter resides in the 140 character limit. I strongly disagree. To me the magic of Twitter resides in the ability to connect with people with whom I have a professional relationship or interest, but not necessarily a personal one. (Personal relationships belong on Facebook or perhaps Instagram.) The 140 character limit is an archaic relic that I believe is harmful to Twitter.

The 140 character limit arose in a world that doesn't exist anymore. In 2006, SMS was a sensible way to transmit data, phones were mostly dumb, blogs were the way to get your thoughts into the world (but experiencing a backlash, which helped bring Twitter to prominence), and most people interacted with the Internet via a desktop.

Facebook et al have shown that given a blank canvas the majority of people do not suddenly pen 10'000 word screeds. Lifting the 140 character limit will not suddenly lead to an explosion of novellas on Twitter, especially now that most people interact via a mobile (I went to my laptop to write this comment, having read the comments on my mobile.)

The 140 character limit is actively harmful to meaningful discussion, and I believe it fuels much of the anger and abuse that Twitter is known for generating.

Drop the 140 character limit and let me have meaningful conversations with the social network on Twitter. That is, to me, an extremely compelling proposition.

(1427 characters)

[whorleater]

I think there's an implicit benefit of the 140 character limit: people are forced to shorten their thoughts into bite-sized pieces. This, to me, is the biggest selling point of Twitter, it allows for an easily palatable feed of what's happening, all in small servings. This sword cuts both ways however, since it leads to short, emotional (oftentimes angry) tweets.

Overall though, the 140 limit I find is a better from a Twitter consumer point of view, but is far worse as a participant on Twitter.

[throwaway5752]

I don't want to go there to read peoples' blogs, though. Some sort of limit on content length feels like it is key to what defines Twitter (whether 140 char or something else).

[noelwelsh]

This can easily solved at the UI level. Posts longer than a certain limit can have only the first few lines shown, with a "fold" like on blogs, or some other mechanism, to reveal the full content.

There won't be many long posts in any case.

[lhnz]

That's exactly what people achieve with screenshots of text below their tweets.

[dwightgunning]

The 140 char limit is precisely the reason you have the opportunity to "connect" with people to whom you have no professional relationship or interest. It is, roughly, the number of characters you need to make a salient point and gain a strangers attention.

[noelwelsh]

I disagree. I believe the unidirectional links in the social graph + public by default are the key features.

Because Twitter is public by default I know everything I post should not be confidential. No details of my kids, for instance. So it tends towards people presenting their professional persona.

Because it's unidirectional, following someone does not imply any personal relationship (cf Facebook, where links are bidirectional and you only friends IRL friends). This means I can follow someone without fear of rejection, and likewise I can gain followers without opening myself up to all my followers' content.

With this I can read someone's posts for a while, and comment when I have a feel for them + have something interesting to say.

[dwightgunning]

No doubt they're important factors but I don't think they're the game changer. The blogosphere (with comments + RSS) exhibited those traits long before Twitter arrived.

[greggman]

I agree with you. And like FB they can just show the top few lines and you can click to read more.

I don't agree with the other comments that 140 is some magic number. I also don't agree that forcing people to shorten their message is a good thing or adds anything. Lots of things can't be shortened to 140 characters. Lots of people post 3-9-12 tweets in a row to try to make their point or post pictures of text or whatever to get around the limit. If you knew you could write as much as you want but only the top 140 characters would appear "above the line" people would still try to give you enough info in that first 140 characters for you to decide if you want to click "more..."

[niftich]

There are many other sites that let people post long-form content and even offer social-like features to go with it.

Bite-sized tweets are a 'feature' for the company itself, because ideally, they can be surfaced out-of-context (like on an algorithmicially jumbled timeline or some aggregator page), and can be seamlessly intermixed with promoted content.

When it was brand-new, Twitter was unique and had a differentiating format. Today, Instagram is the closest analogue except the image and caption are flipped for maximum visual appeal, and that format has seriously infringed on the marketshare (and use-cases) of Twitter by attracting a certain type of content-producer; one that appeals to the coveted 18-30 crowd.

[jbpetersen]

I'd really like to see it done git commit style.

You get 140 characters that will show up as someone scrolls through tweets normally.

Then you're free to type up as much as you want assuming someone's willing to click your tweet to see the full version.

[saurik]

Which is exactly how most comparable websites work, including the example: Facebook.

[jbpetersen]

Know any that place an emphasis on extremely compact overviews without dangling comments, images, videos, and other detritus?

[raverbashing]

> To me the magic of Twitter resides in the ability to connect with people with whom I have a professional relationship or interest, but not necessarily a personal one.

You can do that with Fb pages, Medium, blogs, etc, etc.

> The 140 character limit is an archaic relic that I believe is harmful to Twitter.

You are wrong. Twitter was barely used with SMS.

The limit (now) is a product choice, not a technological one.