[tnone]

If Twitter had been preceded by a platform like it, but with longer character length, do you think people would switch to Twitter? I don't think so.

We actually have a case to compare to due to the curiosity of language: Japanese twitter. They can fit much longer ideas in 140 characters. It is a much saner place, and there is no shorter service leeching users.

It's far more likely that what keeps Twitter going is the social network of the existing user base and the vendor lock in of its APIs.