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Giving you more characters

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381–390 of 493 posts

Re: Giving you more characters

#381
finally you can argue with every facetious person on twitter that'll need extra detail or will take everything out of context, or that need a citation for something that should be common knowledge.

Re: Giving you more characters

#382
post #23

> Trying to cram your thoughts into a Tweet – we’ve all been there, and it’s a pain. When I read this, I thought I was on somebody's blog who wanted to give her idea on why they didn't like Twitter. Then I realised this was... Twitter's blog. The constraint of 140 characters is what made Twitter, IMHO, interesting. Sure it required you to do a bit of puzzling, but that's exactly what made each tweet read worthy. Then…

you can now compress it use emojis. now if there was a service that did that it would be great. also the decompress it (change emojis back to words)

Re: Giving you more characters

#383
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there's a distinction to be made between a government censoring its citizens free-speech, and a private service allowing The most powerful man in the world to use its platform to excuse white-supremacists and increase tension between hostile nuclear powers? Surely? This is not censorship we're talking about, and it's not free-speech. It's about having a set of rules on your social network and enforcing those r…

There is a difference, which is why I didn't talk about the 1st amendment or government protected free speech, so you seem to not be replying to my actual comment. All I'm saying is, if your rules imply that you need to censor the democratically elected leader of the US, then there's something wrong with your rules . Also, let's be clear on this - even if Twitter for some insane reason decided to censor President Tru…

> you seem to not be replying to my actual comment.

Sorry, I was sort of replying to both yours and the comment below it. neither of them mentioned free speech but it was sure to come up.

> if your rules imply that you need to censor the democratically elected leader of the US, then there's something wrong with your rules

So if I run a micro-blogging service and I make a rule which says "hey, nobody's allowed to be racist on here, ok?" and then Donald Trump signs up and says something racist, my rules are wrong because he's the president? Where's the logic in that? If the president breaks the law, is there something wrong with that law too?

So we're clear here, twitter does not have any such rule. I'm suggesting it should.

Re: Giving you more characters

#384

I'm not sure what to make of this. I suppose there is nothing inherently ideal about the (arbitrary) 140 character limit on tweets. Why not 180, or 280, etc? Still, my first reaction was, this is .. a bad idea: the 140-character limit is iconic, it's at the core of their value proposition, and Twitter is going to dilute their brand if they abandon it. I think it's not only that people sometimes feel limited by the 14…

> the 140-character limit is iconic, it's at the core of their value proposition It was related to the core of their value proposition when that was “microblogging that can be updated and recieved over SMS”. Now, its just legacy.

Nah. It is still very valuable for readers in that it forces concision. It keeps the "micro" in microblogging.

Re: Giving you more characters

#385
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that 140 characters is what makes twitter twitter. But then again I can't understand what 140 characters are usefull for. I have a twitter account since 2007 (or 2008, not sure). I didn't get it back then. I came back more than once, as it got constantly more popular. I never got it. The quality of content tends to be, for my opinion, very poor. It's mostly people misrepesenting and insulting other. 1) Twitte…

Agree 100%. I've tried to really get into it many times. Maybe once a year or so, I'll tell myself, "Okay, I'm going to really 'get' twitter this time." The people I follow are some genuinely interesting people. And god writers. I subscribe to their blogs' RSS feeds. But engaging in that conversation with them is almost impossible if you don't already know them in person. I'm not terrible at saying things either. I t…

There's nothing wrong with mainly being a reader on Twitter. That's a valid and common way to use it.

Re: Giving you more characters

#386

Lots of cynicism around here. For me, the 140 character limit really was very frustrating. I tweet rarely, but when I do I often spend 2-3 minutes trying to fit the message into the character limit. Often I just abandon it completely because there's no way to make it fit without having to send multiple messages. This change seems completely reasonable to me, if not a bit delayed.

Making people stop and think, and sometimes abandon what they were going to say, is a really good aspect of Twitter.

Absolutely. That drive toward concision is what makes it hugely valuable to me as a reader. If people want to write something longer elsewhere and link to it, they can. But even there they need to precisely summarize it so I can decide whether it's worth the time.

Re: Giving you more characters

#387
post #33

In an effort to get people to look into each other’s eyes more, and also to appease the mutes, the government has decided to allot each person exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words, per day. When the phone rings, I put it to my ear without saying hello. In the restaurant I point at chicken noodle soup. I am adjusting well to the new way. Late at night, I call my long distance lover, proudly say I only used fifty-…

Sort of related, but on a more humorous note, a short film about a man who has only 1500 words left to live:

https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2016/05/25/1500-words/

Re: Giving you more characters

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish it would take longer, because frankly it's a dumb idea. It defeats the purpose of Twitter.

Yet Twitter is much more popular in Japan, where the higher information density of the written language effectively gave them this feature from the start.

Twitter is used very differently in Japan than elsewhere, and in ways that seem tightly bound to aspects of Japanese culture. I'd be very careful about assuming that higher word count is really the key difference.

Re: Giving you more characters

#389
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it could do what Markdown does and preserve line-breaks that end in double spaces.

Invisible markup doesn't look like a good idea.

It works just fine for Markdown, I don't see why it wouldn't work equally well here.

Re: Giving you more characters

#390
post #97

I'm convinced there is no one at twitter that understands why they succeeded as a company. Their management team continually makes decisions that are reminiscent of shuffling around deck chairs on the titanic. I get the feeling that they only exist due to inertia which is a death sentence for most tech companies.

> they succeeded as a company

10 years alive, still no profit.

As a company it did not succeed at all.

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