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by icarus_drowning
5576 days ago
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I understand why Winer says that "each is the solution to the other's problem" (referring to Twitter and the NYT). It is a reasonable assumption to come to, but I have to admit: I suspect its wrong. I don't think the primary reason why most "normal" people use Twitter is to share news links. I think Dave Winer uses it that way, but I feel like he has a tendency to assume that his way is the only way. It isn't. I also understand Winer's objection to the 140-character limit. I really do. I personally think that it breaks Twitter for me and others who primarily access it via the web or the data connection on our smartphones. However, I don't think Winer understands that for people who don't access Twitter in this way, anything more that 140 characters completely breaks the service. My wife used to have a "dumb" phone and thus access Twitter entirely through SMS. Had the service broken the 140-character limit, she would not have been able to use it. I don't know how many people use Twitter in this manner. I don't know if anyone but Twitter does. I suspect, though, that Twitter doesn't change this because they know it will negatively impact enough of their userbase that it isn't worth dealing with. |
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Twitter's appeal is that it is a blog+rss feed combination and is probably the only one of it's kind. The technologies existed as separate entities - you post your thoughts on your own page - you use a separate tool to read an aggregated list of other's thoughts. Twitter combined the two into a dead simple interface.
The 140 character limit - initially an artifact left over from the days when sms was the primary means of using it - is now more of a practicality issue.
You can't show a steady stream of other's thoughts if they all extend to multiple pages.