Twitter – will the 140 char barrier be broken?

I’ve been on Twitter since the 11th of June 2007 and since that time I’ve generated over 31K tweets (and I’m not saying for one minute that’s an achivement!). Like most folks I scratched my head when entering the world of Twitter for the first year or so and then, gradually, things started to fall into place (I read a great article about this only earlier today actually). 

So, during that time I’ve learnt a lot about Twitter and accumulated a lot of experience. And today, I finally changed my mind on a fundamental issue: the 140 character limit will need to vanish at some point.

What led me to this? Well, don’t get me wrong, if you’d have asked me this a year ago I’d have said “No way!” and “the day they do that it’ll instantly morph into MySpace and I’ll close my account!“. So, why the change of heart?

Well, for one thing I’ve been using the new Google Plus, and using it reminded me of the flexibility of moving beyond 140 chars (yeah, you could could say that Facebook itself should have reminded me of that but, as I can’t stand Facebook, that’s a moot point 😉

Why the 140 char constraint in the first place?

Well I dunno for sure but I’m guessing that this is something to do with SMS/TEXT system which is restricted to approx 160 chars(1). Either way, it seems daft that the sound barrier of 140 chars cannot be broken at some point.

Why are 140 chars not enough?

My argument is that 99 times out of a 100, 140 IS enough. Well, it’s enough for those who are already versed in the mystical ways of Twitter – who have learnt the suble art of boiling information down to the bare essentials.

However, there are edge cases when we start ro run into trouble, when we get into debates and points and counter point are raised; the Twitter experience just starts to creak a bit. You could say “yeah, but then you change over to email/Skype etc” but no! I don’t want to! I want Twitter to handle this for me. Hell, I had to change gears over into a blog post because of this very reason(2) but that’s not the way it should be.

The Arguments Against

So I tweeted earlier that I thought that perhaps there was life beyond the 140 limit and I was met with some pretty stern responses – that’s cool – I think I’d have thought the same not so long ago. So, why do I think that moving beyond 140 won’t destroy the Twitter experience?

Well, for starters, we need to be open enough to admit that there could be a future beyond 140 chars. That (shock horror!), perhaps, Twitter didn’t have it all figured out when they put that constraint in; perhaps the the 140 char limit is NOT the be all and end all of spcial media?

Secondly, I’d say this: perhaps Twitter has already taught us a very valuable lesson: to be brief. We already know that, in the maelstrom of social media, you have to be succint if you are ever to tempt the attention deficit audience to listen to you – waste characters at your peril! If you impinge on people’s bandwidth then they aint gonna listen, it’s as simple as that. Tweet too often (or too long)…and you’ll get ignored or unfollowed. 

So, yes, I honestly believe that just because you can go beyond 140 chars does not mean that we all will. Not only that I’d say this, Twitter clients apps will always be pretty restrictive on the amount of summary text to show for each tweet in our feeds (and 140 chars seems a good default to use); anything beyond that and you’ll need to click “read more” to get to the below the fold bit.

But why use it?

As I say, 99 time out of 100 we can tweet (and field replies and counter replies) whilst not worrying about the limit. However, sometimes we get into debates and want to dig into the finer points. Indeed, this post is a classic example, I reallly couldn’t get into the detail I wanted to on Twitter and needed the breathing space of less restrictions (but that’s not to say that I’d need this amount of space per tweet though!).

To End

Your could say that TwitLonger or Deck.ly already handle this but my argument is that all of these third party solutions are not worth much until they are native to the core of Twitter (and with Twitter now owning Tweetdeck, who knows 😉

So, will we move beyond 140?

Joel

1) I say approx as, when I went travelling a few years ago, I could send texts back to the UK but, on occasion, I had to make sure that I didn’t go much above 140 chars. Perhaps the carriers needed to use a bit of the payload for their own needs?

2)  Actually, that’s not quite true. I tend to assume that tweets are pretty ephemeral in nature and I felt I wanted to get these points down into a more permanent medium (and one where the replies weren’t limited to 140 chars either).

 

 

Posted on Author joelhughes2Categories Uncategorized

6 thoughts on “Twitter – will the 140 char barrier be broken?”

  1. spacer Keith Crawford says:

    So I’ll ride the fence a bit. I completely agree there is a need for a long form conversation. 140 is too limiting.However, I don’t think Twitter will ever consider it and I’m not sure I want them to. I just push people to skype or Google+. I can’t imagine the verbosity that would happen if the 140 limit was breached.Good thoughts though.

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  2. spacer Joel Hughes says:

    Thanks for stopping by Keith,I just think that ultimately Twitter don’t *want* us to have to leave Twittwr so as to use G+/Skype etc when the conversation gets too tough for tweets to handle; that to me seems like a lost opportunity.I think Twitter could easily create a >140 method which respected people’s stream and put the onus on content creators to put key points above the fold.Joel

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  3. spacer Steve Kirtley says:

    As I said on Twitter last night I believe that if Twitter were to remove the 140char restriction it would lose them a lot of their edge, and also a lot of users. Myself included.Twitter has forced users to think, summarise and shorten their thoughts and made itself into a tool which doesn’t *have* to take hours to catch up with the events in the world, or amongst your friends & followees.The savvy twitter users know when something needs more thought, or more characters and link to a blog post or another online medium – providing a short and piffy summary to intrigue those users enough to follow the link.imo Twitter is not the right medium for full on discussions about detailed topics- inevitably that will lead to polluting other peoples timelines with discussions that may not be of any interest to them whatsoever…Arguably what you have done here with this idea is exactly the correct route. Raise the question on twitter, gauge opinion, then take the detailed discussion to a more appropriate medium for further explanation and comment. I just dont see any way you could have put your argument across so eloquently and received such detailed and wise responses using Twitter, regardless of character limit… Look at the number of characters you’ve used here to put your views across – nobody wants even the potential of all that appearing in their timeline (regardless of how it’s presented)…I personally feel even services that already exist such as twitlonger are missing the point and encouraging poor Twitter etiquette…</rant>

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  4. spacer Joel Hughes says:

    Hi Steve,thanks for dropping by.I obviously failed to get across a few key points eloquently so let me make some additional notes:1) this post (and it’s length) should not be taken as an exact, one-for-one, comparison as to how I would want the conversation to take place on an enhanced Twitter. My response has been guided by the constraints of the medium. I was unable to go into the detail last night when we were in conversation mode – that, I believe, is a shame.2) I failed also to get across the fact that even IF Twitter did allow (in some circumstances) longer tweets that client apps would strive to preserve the experience of the timeline (i.e. 140 chars). I.e. you do not have to scan thru a list of blog posts. Also, I don’t buy it that our timelines would be polluted; noisy attention hoggers always get unfollowed. Also, you *may* choose to use the extra length facility for *only* select people in replies (where you’ve probably already lost a load of chars due to usernames: e.g. https://twitter.com/#!/Joel_Hughes/status/90315881762127872) 3) Taking a look at your recent tweets on your profile I’m not convinced that you have hit the same problem as I have; i.e. where a debate is evolving and we are hitting the constraints of Twitter (esp with multi-usernames). You think it’s fine for the conversation to have to spin off to an alternative medium and I think it’s great that we have that option (hey, it’s an open web!) but I do wonder (hence the point of this article) if there is an evolution of Twitter which can provide a middle ground.4) </rant>? Don’t “rant” chap – it’s not a life and death thing, it’s meant to be fun :)Joel

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  5. spacer Sophie Dennis says:

    I think it would be a huge mistake for Twitter to break its 140 char limit. I see this as it’s major USP against the potential “threat” of Google+. Yes, it’s roots – in the max length for an SMS – are largely moot now, certainly in the UK, but I still think it has value.Mainly, I don’t buy the arguement that Twitter has taught us to be brief, or that Twitter’s brevity will carry over to other platforms + . I am already finding it more difficult to handle following just over 100 people on Google+, than I do following 400+ on Twitter. That’s because just two or three posts can easily fill my screen on +. On Twitter, I can see 20 or 30 at a glance.The use case where I think Twitter could make vast improvements to its user experience is in multi-person discussion. The problem you mention in your comment, about how as soon as you try to include more than a couple of @usernames, you’ve no room to actually say anything at all, is very real. As is the difficulty of following a conversation between multiple people, unless they are using a shared hashtag.There are fixes for this which would not involve breaking the core 140 char rule:1) Let me reply-to someone without including their username within the tweet itself. Or make @usernames not count towards the character limit. That way I can Tweet to four or five people, without finding I’ve then not got room for the actual message. 2) Improve threading and conversation tracking. Twitter already does this a little around the “reply” button, but it’s not surfaced well within the interface, and it’s too easy for posts to get lost or dropped.I’m not saying either of these is going to be easy to implement. How do you present a big @ mention list without cluttering the UI, just as much as increasing the char limit might? How do you technically track conversations reliably. But I’d rather see Twitter improve the experience around their core USP, than engage in “me too” feature matching.

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  6. spacer Joel Hughes says:

    Hi Spohie,many thanks for stopping by. I have to say, I *love* the fact that people get so vocal about this issue, it goes to show how much Twitter has formed part of our lives :)Perhaps I should do a mockup as I don't think I've been very clear here: my point is that if Twitter upgraded beyond 140* chars I think our "at a glance" view of the stream must *not* be impacted; Tweets will always be seen through this letter box view (thus avoiding the issues Google+/Facebook are having). I do not think for one minute that Twitter would simply one day say "hey, go on, you can post 500 chars now" without doing some serious UI, UX and app thinking first. As far as "taught to be brief" is concerned; I've certainly found that I try to write emails more concisely (and I've seen other people describe this as a knock on effect of Twitter as well) but, we all learn different things so some folks will take away brevity from Twitter and some will not. Back with Google+ I would say that I'm pretty brief on there but I'm not seeing the "system" as doing a very good job of inhibiting large posts from taking over my stream. In short, they need to learn from Twitter and I'm sure they will. Like you, I want my "at a glance" view of the stream – this is crucial. I love your suggestions on fixing some of Twitters issues; allowing replies to slip outside of the tweet seems like something worthy of consideration. Personally I think Twitter really needs to up their game with Lists; I want to be able to tweet to lists; this would then do a much better job of representing groups etc. To be honest I think Twitter need to now roll out some changes, things have been quite quiet. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughtsJoel*A subtle point is that there are some languages which use a word per character; I'm sure you can see that for these users Twitter is a much more expressive medium. Therefore our "short and fast" view of Twitter is not necessarily shared throughout the world.

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