By: Claire Kim
Twitter has branded itself with the 140-character count, but it may be ditching it soon for a higher 10,000-character limit.
The social media platform has been going through some rough times lately. Twitter’s stocks have been dropping, and their new user growth has slowed drastically. Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter, has been trying to combat these setbacks with various attempts at innovation, including the concise news function Moments. Not much has helped, as stocks and user growth continue to fall.
One of the more recent attempts Twitter is considering to revive its userbase is to extend the word limit. Sina Weibo, Twitter’s Chinese counterpart, has already implemented a higher character count in response to these rumors at 1,000 characters. It’s quite feasible for Twitter to do the same. The new character limit would match the character limit Twitter has imposed on its Direct Messages. The design would add a “read more” after 140 characters, so that when one scrolls through their newsfeed, they’re not bombarded with 10,000 character long tweets.
There has been intense backlash to this announcement. Twitter’s charm point is its brevity: cutting down a message or thought to less than 140 characters simplifies and clarifies the message. By increasing the character limit, a lot of Twitter shorthands (“LRT”, “DM”) and tweeting styles would be rendered pointless. Some also worry that this extended character length would be used to increase ad space for businesses, another form of revenue that Twitter is trying to tap into.
As of now, Twitter has not implemented the extended character limit. However, Twitter should keep in mind its roots when considering its future: more is not always better, especially in social media.
