Slashdot Mirror
Twitter Will No Longer Count Usernames Against a Tweet's 140-Character Limit (phonedog.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PhoneDog: Last year, Twitter updated its service so that photos, videos, and other media wouldn't count against your 140-character limit. Now it's excluding another feature from that limit. Twitter is now rolling out an update that excludes usernames from your tweet's 140-character limit. This means that you can tag as many people in your tweet as you'd like, but still have 140 characters for your actual message. With this change, Twitter is also tweaking how usernames are shown when you're @ replying to people. Now you'll see "Replying to" followed by user names at the top of your tweet, rather than a long string of user names in the tweet itself. Tapping this will show you exactly who you're replying to. This update is now rolling out to Twitter.com as well as the Twitter apps for Android and iOS.
..longer POTUS blasts. I'm thrilled.
Silence is a state of mime.
We should all be thankful for the phenomenal advances in computer technology that have made it possible to accommodate the extra bandwidth and storage that will be needed for this.
more bullshit articles
that matters.
"Write in textese and we'll autoexpand for you into more than 140 characters."
"We'll only count the gzip-compressed message length against the 140 character limit, not the original message."
"We'll only count the CMIX-compressed message length against the 140 character limit, not the original message."
Twitter is realizing that the 140 character limit is a millstone around their neck and is too short; they'd like to go to at least a few hundred bytes, but they are afraid they're going to destroy their brand and be perceived as just another blogging platform, so they come up with all these "it's 140 characters, but..." tweaks.
I remember the good old days on Usenet when advertisers and trolls discovered that the posting software allowed them to crosspost their junk to every single newsgroup in existence with no limitations or drawbacks whatsoever. The term "spam" was invented during the ensuing fun.
Now Twitter is going to unleash the same fun with tagging users for trolls and advertisers on their service. Its nice to see someone who still remembers and appreciates those good old days. You will no longer need to follow someone to get their garbage in your timeline. Ah, the memories... I can hardly wait!
Why can't you have tweets that are much longer - say 2000 words, or a whole magazine article? Why can't you have some layout options in your tweets? You know, like we used to with DTP (Desktop Publishing) 20+ years ago? I just don't understand Twitter's obsession with "short messages". What's so bad about longer tweets? Or are they no longer tweets then? Very confusing....
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
When I was a kid /. was full of interesting and relevant news and tidbits, not this laughable insignificant shit. Please take the domain off auto-renew and die a dignified death.
so I guess I can use all of "War and Peace" as my user name :)
Maybe it's just Twitter employees pushing hard for arbitrary changes to be able to take credit for something. Maybe 100 bad ideas get proposed every month with a lot of energy, and it's getting tedious to argue against each of them, so some get accepted?
This isn't news.
infinite storage now that usernames are not counted, I can sign up for accounts with usernames containing the data I want to store and disseminate.
Also, it probably now sucks to have one of those single-letter usernames, everyone will compose their messages using their handle.
@f@o@o@b@a@r
Twitter used to be based off SMS size.160 - 7bit characters.
What's so bad about longer tweets? Or are they no longer tweets then? Very confusing....
Do you really want me to spend 2000 characters describing my lunch or that amazing bowel movement I just had? Really? Send me your email...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Do you really want me to spend 2000 characters describing my lunch or that amazing bowel movement I just had?
In 140 characters or 2000, I'd rather you don't describe it.
are in Twitter's near future
There's nothing wrong with longer tweets but then you should create an entire new website because it would interest a different set of people.
Twitter is for twits.
I'm still using Pascal.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Mine will limit you to 80-characters so it only uses a single line on a video teletype. (my BBS's "wall' worked like that)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
... these changes aren't expected to have any impact on Twitter's overall signal-to-noise ratio.
Log in or piss off.
People already use Twitter for long messages all the time, but due to the character limit they have to do it by posting images of text or other ugly workarounds. If Twitter wants to give priority to short messages, that's fine, but forcing people into workarounds is just stupid. They had the same thing already with photos, people used TwitPic and other workarounds for a long while until Twitter finally started to allow images. It hasn't killed Twitter, quite the opposite, it made it more versatile and useful. I would expect much the same happening with long text support. Not supporting more than 140 characters isn't a feature, it's a leftover from it's SMS beginnings.
I have two twitter accounts. Actually, I have one and my cat has one too. One of the true arts of twitter is keeping your post down to 140 characters. It's difficult sometimes.
I've also found that using fewer words on slashdot usually gets me modded up more than when I drone on and on endlessly.
I assume people get bored at some point.
And sending a message to too many people at once can get you in trouble. I once sent an e-mail to about 30 different people right after I left one job and then I went on a vacation. I got back home and logged in and found out my e-mail account had been cancelled due to reports of spamming.
I still don't know if my account was cancelled because I emailed 30 people at once or if one (or more?) of them just didn't like me and decided to complain. Would they really do that? Maybe.
I should probably just shut up now.
- I don't actually remember how many people I sent that e-mail to. It might not have been as many as 30 people. I had worked with all of them and most of them I really liked and respected.
-- And nobody even replied. I don't know if they tried because my account was cancelled. Imagine that - losing an e-mail account because I emailed too many people.
Does this mean my username can be Hyades1 thegodamnedestsmartguy everandunquestionablythebestabuserofcharacterlimits imposedbyplacesliketwitterwhereideasgotodie isgoingtohavethebestesthandle everinthehistoryof tweetstorming sothere?
It would have looked better, but Slashdot apparently needs spaces between at least some words or it won't allow the post.
Anyway...this should be fun.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
What Twitter really needs to do is change from hearts-only, to a visible thumbs-up count (same as the heart) and a visible thumbs-down count.
Why?
Because politicians -- pretty much all of them -- sit there with these asinine tweets that have "hearts" on them in the thousands, sometimes tens of thousands. And there is no indication whatsoever from the people who disagree on the tweet; you have to wade through unending BS to see that, and there's no telling how far you'll have to go.
But if a politician says "X", and it's 10,000 thumbs-up / hearts, and 150,000 thumbs-down, now you know what you're looking at. And for that matter, so does the politician.
I don't care -- at all -- about other folk. But I think Twitter is doing the nation a direct disservice by going hearts-only on politician's accounts. I don't think it would hurt anyone to see both sides of the opinions of their tweets either (goes for slashdot comments, too.) Politicians, though... that hearts thing is straight-up misleading at times.
Anyway. I doubt they care. But I thought I'd speak up here. (Yeah, I sent them a support item on this. It disappeared into the usual darkness over there.)
Wouldn't it be nice if some politician posts X, and you could actually show them what you thought? I think so.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Why can't you have tweets that are much longer - say 2000 words, or a whole magazine article?
You can. It's called posting your article on a pastebin, wiki, blog, or other site, and linking it in a Tweet. TwitLonger is a pastebin specifically for Twitter users. Or if it's your own site, the Twitter Cards feature lets you add <meta> elements to control how the link appears.
Don't post images of text. Use TwitLonger.
Have gnu, will travel.
Preface warning: your Subject asks the question "What's the point of 140 characters?" so I am answering that question directly. I'm intentionally avoiding the subject of why it hasn't been increased (although this may partially answer that question; the idea noted was scrapped).
The 140 limit isn't arbitrary. The goal was to a limit that was below the SMS text length limit, which is 160 characters (or 140 bytes, because GSM 03.38 encoding, which is what is used for SMS, uses 7-bit bytes). Anything above that is broken down into individual/separate text messages of 153 bytes or thereabouts (different carriers seem to do this differently). UCS-2, UTF-8, and UTF-16 are handled "uniquely" as well. You've probably seen some mobile phones "automatically" turn a long SMS that contains emojis into an MMS -- now you know why.
Twitter came into existence in roughly 2005 or 2006, and that the original goal of Twitter was to act as a "group messaging service" where you could send SMS messages to several peers/friends at once (group SMS/MMS send capability did not exist then). With that in mind, it's amusing to see what for and how it's used today (ex. people tell long stories on Twitter, consisting of 20+ replies. These people do not understand the difference between Twitter and a blog service; they are not even remotely the same).
Because everyone posts their tweets via SMS. Didn't you know that?
Also, Twitter users have *extremely* short attention spans. They cannot be expected to read that much.
"Twitter Will No Longer Count Usernames Against a Tweet's 140-Character Limit"
All this innovation is killing me! What's next, uppercase letters?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I don't know why this is news, but ok. I'm still not going to log in to Twitter except to get up to date news on how late my train is going to be from the local train group. Honestly I'd rather we just went back to RSS or Atom feeds
moox. for a new generation.
> I just don't understand Twitter's obsession with "short messages".
My pet peeve with Twitter is that replies / conversations are a second class citizen on their platform.
@this @allows @very @long @tweets, @but @certain @users @with @very @common @names @are @going @to @get @annoyed @at @all @the @notifications @they @get @if @people @use @this @hack.
But 140 characters are easier to ignore than 2000.
Just compare the average goatse-posting with the average racist rant here. Both are annoying, but the goatse one is easier to scroll by.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
tl;dr
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So you can't (or don't care to), even under coercion. Good to know.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire