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Twitter to Stop Counting Photos and Links in 140-Character Limit

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Re: Twitter to Stop Counting Photos and Links in 140-Character Limit

#181

Post by Retric »

vit05 wrote: post #154
downandout wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo, it shows that, like many of us, they don't really understand why Twitter became so popular. That being the case, they don't know what they can and cannot safely change.

To me, Twitter works because many people prefer to read 100 headlines and know a little about everything, than reading just a big essay. Have a variety of views, rather than just one. It is better for the reader, not so for the writer. Because of that, I do not understand why they focus so much on getting more writers (login) than readers (views).

IMO, it's a platform for people to self promote which causes an obvious viral effect.

"follow me at _ on Twitter"

Re: Twitter to Stop Counting Photos and Links in 140-Character Limit

#182

Post by zaphar »

marlag wrote: post #179
downandout wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo, it shows that, like many of us, they don't really understand why Twitter became so popular. That being the case, they don't know what they can and cannot safely change.

The more you think about Twitter the more you understand it, including why it works, and at Twitter, lots of people are thinking about Twitter, so they probably know that SMSes worked like conversation, where the tech forced you to be polite, i.e. not ramble on about something without letting the other party say anything, they should just listen. SMS conversations flows like a oilite chat about the weather. Quick, br…

My experience is a lot like that. However one of the core issues Twitter has had in the recent past is that many users were not experiencing polite conversation on twitter. They were experiencing harassment instead.

Re: Twitter to Stop Counting Photos and Links in 140-Character Limit

#183

Post by devstack »

askafriend wrote: post #11

The fact that it took this long for them to make such an obvious change speaks to how afraid they are (were?) to challenge core assumptions about the product.

Do you think these moves can save what Twitter use to be once? I believe not. Twitter has lost the social game. They never pivoted when Facebook was making continuous efforts to slay them. And in that time, they lost a lot of their audience to SnapChat, Instagram, WhatsApp and many other apps.

Re: Twitter to Stop Counting Photos and Links in 140-Character Limit

#184

Post by scholia »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #17
stephenitis wrote: post #2

This is long over due. Can they fix this... When a Tweet starts with a @username, the only users who will see it in their timeline (other than the sender and the recipient) are those who follow both the sender and the recipient. ".@someone Hello I want to respond to you but in public!"

I agree because most people use Twitter where they replace a person's name with @personsname so they get a notification of it. Referring to people should work like this in my opinion. Honestly it should notify you even if an @ wasn't included similar to how hashtags essentially don't matter anymore. Edit: seems people disagree with me. You can't create a feature that limits natural parts of speech. It's just simply n…

> Honestly it should notify you even if an @ wasn't included similar to how hashtags essentially don't matter anymore.

One problem with that is that dozens of people have identical names. The @name works because it's a unique identifier... though people still sometimes send tweets to the wrong person.

Re: Twitter to Stop Counting Photos and Links in 140-Character Limit

#185

Post by Tenhundfeld »

visarga wrote: post #133
Tenhundfeld wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly disagree. Sure, I've been frustrated at times when I can't express an idea in 140 characters, but in general, I think the limitation is a benefit. As a creator, it makes me distill my tweet to the purest essence of what I'm trying to say, and as a consumer, it lets me scan through my timeline quickly. Also, there's nothing stopping people from tweeting an idea and including a link to a blog/gist/whatever whe…

> Sure, I've been frustrated at times when I can't express an idea in 140 characters, but in general, I think the limitation is a benefit. Doesn't that lead to a tendency for low quality content (content that can be consumed in a few seconds, like animated gifs, quotes, etc)? I usually want to read in-depth articles and editorials, or thoughtful comment threads.

Yeah, fair point. It's nearly impossible to explore a big, high-quality idea on Twitter, but I personally use it mostly as a discovery tool, not a discussion or exploration tool.

Based on the people I follow, I get exposed to a lot of news and ideas I might have otherwise missed, but I don't need or want Twitter to be the place where I dig in for more details. I'm fine clicking a link or Googling something if I think it's interesting enough to warrant further investigation.

I guess my main concern is that if Twitter tries to be all things to all people it's going to lose its special utility as a discovery engine. In other words, I don't want Twitter to become Facebook or a glorified RSS reader. For me, Twitter is the best source for breaking news and ideas ignored by mainstream media, sprinkled with tidbits from friends I know IRL.

In general, I'm happy with what it is now, perhaps with some better controls for blocking and preventing abuse. If they can find a way to keep the concise sharing/discovery aspect while integrating longer content, I'm cool with that – albeit a bit skeptical.

Re: Twitter to Stop Counting Photos and Links in 140-Character Limit

#186

Post by zoonek »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #163
Animats wrote: post #119

Also, I think Unicode characters only count as one character. This is now totally disconnected from SMS.

Yes, they count the number of normalised Unicode code points. They don't care how many bytes they take up.

This is particularly unfair when you compare what can be said in a tweet in Japanese or Chinese, and what can be said in European languages: with Asian languages, you can easily fit three reasonably complex sentences -- that is much longer than this 274-character paragraph.

Re: Twitter to Stop Counting Photos and Links in 140-Character Limit

#187

Post by Tenhundfeld »

newjersey wrote: post #104
Tenhundfeld wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly disagree. Sure, I've been frustrated at times when I can't express an idea in 140 characters, but in general, I think the limitation is a benefit. As a creator, it makes me distill my tweet to the purest essence of what I'm trying to say, and as a consumer, it lets me scan through my timeline quickly. Also, there's nothing stopping people from tweeting an idea and including a link to a blog/gist/whatever whe…

This discussion sorely misses people who subscribe to tweets by SMS. Here are a few from my stream. Please feel free to draw your own conclusions: @MKBHD: From this weekend... #ultimate https://t.co/1bSuvFueee/s/9EwY m.twitter.com/MKBHD -- @woot: $134.99 : Philips BR-30 Hue Starter Pack Bonus Kit https://t.co/X5Thalnvvr/s/JR-S m.twitter.com/woot -- @maryjofoley: There is a new local OneDrive app for Win 10 for PCs an…

True. I never think about the SMS angle, which of course was the original need for the limitation.

Re: Twitter to Stop Counting Photos and Links in 140-Character Limit

#188

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

chris_wot wrote: post #69
mattl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microblog, but sure..

Whilst Twitter has someone tweet the occasional gem, it's genuinely few and far between. I honestly feel that the format was great when it was only really programmers who used it (and even then I'm not so sure...) but limiting people to 140 characters, even discounting images and links, means most people can't convey views on most complex issues. I have an unpopular view, but I'm firmly of the belief that all Twitter…

I have never been a fan of the concept. You have to work really hard to force an interesting thought into 140 characters, which leads most people just post throwaway snark and dark humor. And reading backwards through a chain of posts to simulate a real post is just stupid. I made several attempts to use the thing, anyway, because "everyone else was using it."

I eventually came to use 2 accounts, one anonymous, to interact with brands and personalities (but I repeat myself), and one personal, to keep up with people I knew first-hand. The former devolved into just ranting about everything that I found sub-optimal (usually about the .NET workflow for my day job), and the latter didn't generate enough interesting activity to care about. Both were just negative pressures on my daily activity, so I finally just shut down both.

Re: Twitter to Stop Counting Photos and Links in 140-Character Limit

#190

Post by djsumdog »

wodenokoto wrote: post #19
ldong wrote: post #4

The beauty of twitter is to tweet with concise messages. I'd be disappointed if this 140 characters restriction got removed.

that beauty has turned tweets into incomprehensible multitweets and images of text. what i don't understand is why they haven't built long-form notes that can be inserted into a tweet, just like images can be inserted.

There were things like Tweet Longer, and TwitPic (before Twitter had images) and lots of other little services that built on top of Twitter.

Twitter then started doing a lot of that stuff on its own and tried to kill off the other services (3rd party clients like Falcon Pro, TwitPic, etc.)

What was once a beautiful ecosystem to support this interesting 140 character thing got gobbled back up by a company that realized it needed to monetize.

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