With rumors and reports abound today speculating that Twitter may be looking to increase the character limit for tweets from 140 to a massive 10,000, everybody and their grandmother weighed in with their feelings regarding the news. As if the often-seen “tweetstorms” aren’t already overbearing, personally, the last thing I want is my timeline flooded with endless diatribes. That’s an instant unfollow.
Late Tuesday afternoon, Twitter’s co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey released a statement with regards to the 10,000 character rumors, the aims of the tech magnate to further evolve their UX/UI, and the evolving nature and indexing of the myriad of information sought out everyday on the Twittersphere.
Here’s Dorsey’s statement:
— jack (@jack) January 5, 2016
It’s kind of ironic that the Twitter chairman uses the same way to disseminate his statement as he alludes to people often doing in his actual statement. Sure, expanding text would allow people to circumvent the “picture of text” route and allow Twitter to index the media easier, but at the end of the day, if the message is important enough, won’t it be shared and RT’d regardless? Kind of like fee market philosophy.
I suppose only time will tell with this one, but the overwhelming sentiment I’ve gathered is that people are very against expanding Twitter’s character limit. Myself included.