What The Drum readers think of the rumoured removal of Twitter's 140 character limit
Rumours are rife that Twitter is considering canning the 140 character limit on tweets.
Dom Burch, senior director for marketing innovation and new revenue at Asda, wrote that Twitter is “in danger of becoming the pub people no longer want to drink in,” although he branded the shift a “very smart move”.
In the first half of 2015 the site is primed to allow users to upload extended messages of up to allow 10,000 characters, according to reports.
Public opinion seemed split on the rumour so we thought who better to ask than The Drum readers?
We put out a few questions to test the waters.
#Twitter10k yay or nay - what do you think of rumoured new character limit? Let us know. pic.twitter.com/kB6j17XhaD
— The Drum (@TheDrum) January 6, 2016
Most were totally against the changes.
@TheDrum No-one is going to read 10k tweets - pointless — ن Winston Smith #oxi (@Globalidentity) January 6, 2016@TheDrum nay! If it ain't broke don't fix it! — Laura Henderson (@LauraAtRocket) January 6, 2016@TheDrum with great character limits comes great responsibility — Alex McCormick (@tankmccormick) January 6, 2016@TheDrum #Twitter10k would kill the speed of the platform that sets it apart from others. — Parker. (@jamesparrrker) January 6, 2016@TheDrum Won't make a blind bit of difference. It'll be links, just native ones. We already have links. Doubt users will even notice. — Swissss (@Swissss) January 6, 2016@TheDrum I don't understand the decision, clearly Medium is the Twitter with 10k limit? — Krystian Szastok (@krystianszastok) January 6, 2016
@TheDrum Nay! Brevity is what sets Twitter apart. It's more immediate & more digestible and that's how we like it! — Onespacemedia (@onespacemedia) January 6, 2016
@TheDrum Bound to make it more like the Facebook environment, full of pointless spam, lengthy rants and generally nonsense. #Twitter10k — Joanna Little (@EskimoLittle) January 6, 2016@TheDrum Classic 'bait & switch' we've come to expect from social platforms. Build community around unique offering, then completely change. — Alex (@alex_titcomb) January 6, 2016@TheDrum 100% nay. Twitter's brand is based on the 140 character feature. Twitter is committing suicide if they go ahead with #Twitter10k — سلام de nada (@Salam_deNada) January 6, 2016@TheDrum #twitter10k is a bit OTT. Yeah, more characters would be nice, but why not just double the limit to 280? — Aaron Hooper (@AaronAspire) January 6, 2016@TheDrum Twitter loses a defining part of its brand as soon as the 140 limit goes. — Digital Media Team (@digitalmediatm) January 6, 2016I always felt 140 words is what made Twitter different from the rest! I foresee a cluttered news feed with lots of rants. @TheDrum #SMM — Grace Face (@GracialNation) January 6, 2016And some could see the benefit - with some caveats.
@TheDrum yay - only as long as it stays 140 ie a headline, and the rest can be viewed via an expandable "see more" button/something similar — Steve Vincent (@SVincent1981) January 6, 201671.43 x the nonsense #Twitter10k @TheDrum — Tim[othy] Collins (@rummychap) January 6, 2016
@TheDrum it'd be useful to be able to track particular words and phrases that are sometimes lost when users screenshot lengthy notes etc. — Poppy Ingham (@Poppy_Ingham) January 6, 2016
@TheDrum it is not the number of characters, but their QUALITY that matters. Twitter is 100% "Darwinian" and will self-select. — Saverio Bianchi (@SaverioBianchi) January 6, 2016
Analysis from Brandwatch saw that mentions of the rumoured feature peaked at over 11,000 mentions an hour worldwide around noon on Wednesday.
More people were positive than negative about the changes.
The Drum's digital editor, Ronan Shields, argued that the move may degrade Twitter’s unique selling point with it in danger of being difficult to differentiate from “the milieu of digital content hubs”.