Slashdot Mirror
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: the 140-Character Limit 'Is Staying'
An anonymous reader writes: The rumor that Twitter will scrap its 140-character limit for tweets just won't die. In an interview with NBC this morning, CEO Jack Dorsey has gone on record to say that the limit is staying.
He said that they had no intention of messing with the chronological timeline, and here we are.
Sorry, I'm not going to use Flash just so I can see some interview. I know how to read, post a transcript of the interview.
Traditionally writers put a space before an opening bracket (like this), but I'm seeing a lot of Slashdot contributors scrunch up the bracket against the last word(like this). Also there are people who don't write the spaces in "a lot" or "at least", and other similar phrases. I wonder if this War on White Space is partly down to Twitter and its character limit.
i can do it in 6: for now.
And the limit here is only 35 chara
Now that Twitter has made its final decision, that it will be sticking strictly to the 140-character limit, a new chance has opened for others to offer similar service offering messages with longer length
After all, it's like Kodak's decision to stay with negatives allowing Conon and others to surpass it with digital photography
People that can't put two complete thoughts toge
>>Twitter founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey insists his social media platform does not censor user content, despite suspicion suggesting otherwise.
>>"Absolutely not," he told TODAY's Matt Lauer
Bullshit. #FreeStacy
Sounds kinky
It's easier for Twitter and the US Government to data-mine things 140 bytes at a time. If you start allowing people to post 1,000 word essays, lexical analysis and pattern matching require far more resources.
Because they have to make the tough executive decisions, like how long a tweet should be.
This is right after he said Twitter wasn't censoring anyone. When there's ample evidence of people being told to delete factual tweets, because it hurts someones feels.
You're doing a bang up job there Jack. You opened at nearly $17.20 and closed at just above $16.50 in after hours trading.
Om, nomnomnom...
I wish they would increase it just a bit, say to 144, because sometimes I have things to say and they just don't seem to fit into 140 charac
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
I don't think I could take more that 140 characters of Donald Trump at one time!
Donald Trump. Just say no.
"Twitter users can relax, we remain absolutely committed to prohibit any text that may provoke any important thoughts or opinions."
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
About a year ago, Twitter was trading in the 50s. So Jack Dorsey has managed to destroy more than half the value of the company.
What do you expect from the genius who hired Sarkeesian to protect free speech, which is like hiring Ted Bundy to run a battered women’s shelter
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Did anyone else read this and immediately think of "No one will ever need more than 640k of RAM"?
I've mixed feelings over social media in general, but Twitter in the specific makes my blood boil.
It's a medium that seems designed to kill off nuance, civility and sophistication of thought. By forcing people into 140 characters and providing social incentives for them to use those 140 characters to say something that will be shared as widely as possible, it encourages them to make the crassest, most polarizing statements possible. I'd put Twitter as the number one reason that so many online debates these days devolve into bitter mud-slinging between the loudest fringes of two opposing echo-chambers.
The rapid-response culture of twitter just makes things worse. Combined with the anonymity of online interactions, it compels people to speak before they've had a chance to do a sense-check and think through the consequences. There's no shortage of examples of responsible individuals in major corporations who have thrown away careers because they got sucked into the vortex that Twitter creates. One example, former Microsoft director Adam Orth and the "deal with it" furore over the planned always-online functionality for the Xbox One. Now, you could argue that in this case, Twitter did us a service by providing him with a platform to air his (or the company's) "true feeling". I'm not necessarily sure that's the right response, though. I strongly suspect pretty much everybody has "true feelings" which are pretty appalling at times (I know I do) and a huge part of social interaction is toning those things down before they can fly from your mouth (or indeed, stopping them altogether). Twitter, by design, takes the brakes off.
Some people can be incredibly witty and lucid within a single sentence. You see those in the occasional +5 Funny or +5 Insightful post on slashdot. Those people are a minority (and most of them struggle to manage it consistently). Most one-line posts are badly written crap (and usually from ACs). Twitter just institutionalizes that, except with less anonymity.
140 characters should be enough for anyone.
The 140 might be staying, but the customers are going.
Passionately Indifferent
PAwPAAAA eats burgers alone :(
There. That only took a dozen characters, thirteen if you want to pretend a stupid fucking pound-sign, or append an exclamation mark... Fourteen to do both, a mere tenth of the stupid fucking arbitrary, goddamned fucking character limit.
Twitter. If you can say what you have to say in under 140 characters, you obviously didn't have shit to say in the first place.
Fuck Twitter.
That Jack said 140 characters is staying, I'm wondering might be one of those Steve Jobsian deft maneuvers where you say what people are listening for, but aren't actually saying what you're planning (and thus don't actually ANSWER the question).
I'd not mind Twitter to stick to 140 characters for tweets as they appear in the Feed. In fact, I tweeted Jack my suggestion:
- 140 characters Tweets would stay. You could continue to tweet 140 characters at a time, OR the 140 character tweet could also be a Summary Tweet that includes expands out into a Super Tweet.
- Super Tweet that would be 500 characters (something like that). The Summary Tweet would show in the Timeline with a "more..." expander widget. Users could choose to subscribe to a Feed or an Expanded Feed, and that would determine how much Tweet the feed is sent. If you sub to an Expanded Feed, you get the 500 character tweets in your timeline without having to make a call-back to Twitter to "load more". For normal feeds, you'd have to wait while the tweet expands. 140 characters can just be too limited a lot of the time, and anywhere from 200 to 500 would be a welcome expansion. The user would be able to edit the Summary Tweet "part" of a Super Tweet before Sending.
- Finally, Twitter should support a Long-form Note. This wouldn't be that difficult, basically some standardized manner to link to a blog post or article, which might be hosted at Twitter, or not be. The nice thing is that they could implement Notes the way Jack has already been using OS X's Note app, use an image representation and attach that to the Summary Tweet/Super Tweet that links to it.
That doesn't mean that 140 has to go away, just as Jack says. It will stay. But that wouldn't have to mean that Twitter can't expand the kinds of Tweets as well.
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
Stupid platform used by stupid people.