[dragonwriter]

> the 140-character limit is iconic, it's at the core of their value proposition

It was related to the core of their value proposition when that was “microblogging that can be updated and recieved over SMS”. Now, its just legacy.

[jsnathan]

I feel like the core value proposition is something like "public expressions that can be consumed quickly and produced with little forethought". I think it's important that Twitter gives you the excuse to be less precise: there isn't enough space.

It's a small thing sure, but if you look at the differences between the popular social platforms, it's all about small differences. If Twitter loses that which distinguishes it from everyone else, that may give them an initial boost when it's a new feature, but then the novelty will wear off and maybe they will have lost what makes them unique.

I'd like to compare this to Hollywood. It feels like the kind of alteration a studio might come up with by relentlessly screen-testing a movie using test audiences. It's one way to guarantee a bland, non-specific result, that won't command any lasting mindshare.

Clearly moving from 140 characters to 280 characters isn't yet that just-like-everything-else end result, but it somehow feels like a step in that direction to me.

[beachy]

Concur.

Imagine an idiot (any idiot) blurting out bileful rubbish. When the platform limits his words, that works in his favour - no nuance can be conveyed, his utterances are sharp, authentic sounding, plausible.

Give him 1000 words to make his case, and suddenly he's stuck. His thoughts were never that deep, and they don't stand up well to being expanded on - there wasn't any substance to begin with.

Twitter is what it is in large part because of that 140 character limit. It allows boofheads of all stripes to sound convincing, because the platform was tailor made for short blasts of hot air.

[veidr]

> Imagine an idiot (any idiot) blurting out bileful rubbish.

There's no idiot shortage on Twitter (or elsewhere), but I'll bet an overwhelming majority of the people who read your sentence above thought of the same person.

[zimpenfish]

> Imagine an idiot (any idiot) blurting out bileful rubbish. > Give him 1000 words to make his case, and suddenly he's

... now blurting out 1000 words of bileful rubbish instead of 100.

[SomeHacker44]

"...with little forethought".

Wow. I tweet very infrequently, and agonize over exactly what to say and how to phrase it so that it is intelligible and interesting in 140 characters.

Then again, I only have a few hundred tweets and endeavor to make each one count.

[ramphastidae]

Yep. One step closer to FB.

[PhasmaFelis]

Twitter with no character limit is just a blog site. There are plenty of blog sites, none of them close to as successful as Twitter. The character limit is key to holding on to the modern zero-attention-span user.

The exact number 140 is legacy, but the super-brief "microblogging" format is vital.

[icebraining]

There are plenty of blog sites, none of them close to as successful as Twitter. The character limit is key to holding on to the modern zero-attention-span user.

There's a slight fallacy here: that no single blog site is as successful as Twitter does not mean blogs as a whole aren't, and therefore that you need the character limit to be successful. I don't have any hard data, but my anecdotal experience matches that: almost nobody I know uses Twitter, whereas every computer/smartphone user I know reads blog posts at least occasionally.

[PhasmaFelis]

> almost nobody I know uses Twitter

Nobody I know voted for Trump, but here he is president. HN readers and their close friends are nowhere near being a representative sample of internet users.

[icebraining]

I get that, but I'd think HN users and their friends would be overrepresented in Twitter, not underrepresented.

[mekkkkkk]

In my experience, the tech crowd is pretty average when it comes to social media (ab)use.

[orblivion]

Things fall into place by accident. I'd say there's no telling what would happen.

Imagine what this is going to do to president Trump. His short quips had a striking impact. He'll never again need to end a message with the one word sentence "JOBS!"

[Jaruzel]

I'd bet real money, that his account is that the front of the queue for this feature. We'll be seeing longer tweets from him imminently.

[robtaylor]

Sad!

[sytelus]

It's hard to compress your thoughts and present it in limited time or space while still keeping its essence and power. This is why lot of tweets are iconic: They are presentation of very strong ideas and opinions in tiny amount of space. You can wear them on t-shirt or thumb it out on smartphone while using just few seconds you have. Larger char limit means diminishing of this quality from writers part and also higher cost from readers part. The 140 chars might be accidental limit but it was just the right balance given the amount of tweets that already exists and able to express intent in that much space.

[wpietri]

Nah. It is still very valuable for readers in that it forces concision. It keeps the "micro" in microblogging.