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Twitter To Stop Counting Photos And Links In 140-Character Limit (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Twitter will stop counting photos and links as part of its 140-character limit for tweets in as soon as two weeks, according to a source familiar with the matter. Right now, links take up 23 characters, even after Twitter automatically shortens them. In January, the Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said the company was looking for new ways to display text on Twitter, and would experiment based on how people use the service. The company considered raising the limit of characters to as many as 10,000. The reason it abides by a 140-character limit is because it allows for tweets to be sent within a mobile text message, which was a common form of sending tweets back in 2006 when the site debuted. Earlier this month, it was reported Twitter blocked U.S. intelligence agencies from having access to a widely used data mining service it partly owns.
These days, people don’t know how to he informative and concise. Twitter forces people to think about what they write. However, 140 characters can also be overly restrictive sometimes, which is why people have wanted to increase the character limit. But if they increase it too much, Twitter will just turn into another blogging service. I think that simple exempting images and links is a good compromise.
In a small enough font :)
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
Earlier this month, it was reported Twitter blocked U.S. intelligence agencies from having access to a widely used data mining service it partly owns.
What's that got to do with the 140 character limit?
The only time I hear about twitter it is when a media outlet writes a story about someone, usually someone else who works in the media, tweeting something that they think is important. From this I conclude that twitter is just a bunch of media and PR people sending messages between themselves so they can report those messages as 'news' to the general public when there is nothing else going on in the world.
I have observed a tendency in all business, after having a huge success with something, to try to change it, and change again, till they kill it. I suppose it's a consequence of the human inability for just doing nothing, and letting things be.
I don't use Twitter, never have, never seen the point. But I know about Twitter The reason being that tweets are cited in all kind of media. The reason being that tweets force people to be concise, and produce text-bites for the media to consume. Forcing people to be concise is something you don't get with 10000 characters. So I suppose I'll cut myself short, too...
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
The 140 character limit does not matter.
I think it matters since it forces people to succinctly make a point.
Think of twitter being a mailinglist for sms.
At least that's how it started. You send a sms to a special number and people following you read it.
"...but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of a thousand words can be adequately described with pictures."
Ezekiel 23:20