Twitter is gearing up to roll out its new 280 character count for every user soon, not just the arbitrarily selected ones.
Back in late September, Twitter let a small group of people test out a new Twitter with double the character space. And since this is 2017 and the internet grabs at every opportunity to melt down, it melted down over this.
And although I’m usually the first one to mock internet meltdowns, this one was merited. Twitter is brief for a reason. What’s that quote? Brevity is the soul of wit? Exactly. If I wanted my newsfeed to be saturated with longwinded, grammar-botched rants, I would recover my password and log into Facebook.
But I don’t do this. I keep current on Twitter because the good stuff and the bad stuff is limited to a cool 140 characters. Anything more than that just gets stuffy.
Take this from Jack, Twitter co-founder and CEO.
This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu
— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017
Did you read anything beyond “this is a small change?” I sure didn’t. Actually for a second, I thought I was back in 2009 scrolling through my Facebook. Pretty sure I heard the Black Eyed Peas in the background, too.
See, this is 2017. We’re living in a new decade. People want to see sleek graphics. They want quippy one liners like “I’m lovin’ it” and “Make America Great Again.” Those things work.
They don’t want their eyes glazing over, feeling like they’re reading a legal document. People skip over those. How many times have you clicked “agree” without reading a contract fully? Every time.
If Twitter was so set on expanding their character count, doubling it was not the way to go. Rookie mistake. People are going to abuse that power. They should have expanded it to an even 200 and called it a day. Now they’re about to open Pandora’s box and take us back in time to 2009. Way to go Twitter. Way to go @Jack.