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Giving you more characters

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131–140 of 493 posts

Re: Giving you more characters

#131

Post by okr »

robtaylor wrote: post #50

@Jack said "Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence!" https://twitter.com/jack/status/912784057863245824 How many people did it take to come up with double a char limit, and how is that 'thoughtful' or 'solving' anything? Total guff. The start of the end of twitter hashtag hottake.

I can think of many reasons, why a limit is somehow hardcoded/assumed throughout the entire system including the history and probably a lot of optimizations around it. You can not think of any? In databases you also have limits, like character limits, like 16k for a varchar or something. Or memcaches with bucket sizes and so on. It is not just changing a number, i can imagine.

Re: Giving you more characters

#132

Post by rajivtiru »

coloneltcb wrote: post #88

worth noting that the 160 char limit on SMS was a product of thoughtful design, and user-centric deliberation, not arbitrary: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/invented-... I wish Twitter had the same commitment. Or at least hired product people who used the service.

Did you even read the blog?

The increase wasn't arbitrary. And neither is the initial 140 limit...

Originally, our constraint was 160 (limit of a text) minus username. But we noticed @biz got 1 more than @jack. For fairness, we chose 140. Now texts are unlimited. Also, we realize that 140 isn't fair—there are differences between languages. We're testing the limits. Hello 280!

https://twitter.com/biz/status/912783936123691009

Re: Giving you more characters

#134

Post by bsaul »

iaw wrote: post #82
madeofpalk wrote: post #78

Twitter seems to have the worst luck/timing when it comes to 'new features'. Last time it was Users: Please help get rid of these nazis Twitter: ROUND PROFILE PICS! this time its Users: Please help prevent nuclear war Twitter: HOW ABOUT LONGER TWEETS!

I can't believe I'm writing this, but given the current modes of political communication in the US longer tweets may prevent nuclear war...

Don't think it's a trump thing , or even something specific to the US. I remember a few years ago, our french prime minister tweeted his condolences to the victim of a terror attack in France.

Re: Giving you more characters

#135

Post by askvictor »

Y_Y wrote: post #127
askvictor wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use code blocks for anything but code; they're unreadable on mobile.

I think you (and many valiant others) are fighting a losing battle here. God forbid HN should allow a quote style, that'd be so bloaty.

Sigh. Or at least render code blocks nicely on mobile.

Re: Giving you more characters

#136

Post by flycaliguy »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #72
bostonpete wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was disappointed to find this poem didn't have exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words.

It's kind of weird that it doesn't. You could so easily change the "sixty-seven" to "twenty-five".

Don't ever let a poet see this comment.

Re: Giving you more characters

#137

Post by nradov »

hk__2 wrote: post #77
nradov wrote: post #12

And in a few more years they'll increase the limit to 560 characters, and so on. Users will just continue to bypass any limit by tweeting images containing large blocks of text which is worse for everyone than just removing length limits.

> And in a few more years they'll increase the limit to 560 characters, and so on. Users will just continue to bypass any limit by tweeting images containing large blocks of text The blog post explains how that’s not true with their Japanese example: > Our research shows us that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people Tweeting in English, but it is not for those Tweeting in Japanese. If Japanes…

The point is that their analysis is garbage. They looked at the length of tweets, and what percentage of tweets hit the 140 character limit. But the reality is that users impacted by the limit either send multiple tweets (1/n, 2/n, ... n/n) or attach an image containing a block of text. How do you measure that?

Re: Giving you more characters

#138

Post by scotchio »

My only concern is I really appreciate zero fluff when browsing whatever.

I imagine this will be abused a little bit. Not a big deal since there's images, gifs, video, and polls to grab your eye. Just slightly annoying.

For example:

```

BREAKING

BREAKING

BREAKING

BREAKING

BREAKING

BREAKING

Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet Consectetur Adipisicing Elit Sed Do Eiusmod Temp - http://example.com

```

Re: Giving you more characters

#139

Post by madeofpalk »

freedomben wrote: post #100
coldtea wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because otherwise the role of Twitter is thwarting nazis and preventing nuclear war?

Sadly, these days it seems that the tech companies have become the content police :sigh: The only thing worse is that there are people crying out for it.

They're not tech companies though any more. They're content companies.

Re: Giving you more characters

#140

Post by eridius »

coloneltcb wrote: post #88

worth noting that the 160 char limit on SMS was a product of thoughtful design, and user-centric deliberation, not arbitrary: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/invented-... I wish Twitter had the same commitment. Or at least hired product people who used the service.

The 160 character limit was a balance between "limit should be as low as possible for bandwidth reasons" and "users must be able to express simple messages". The former isn't an issue anymore, so there's not longer any obvious reason why 160 should be the limit.
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