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Giving you more characters

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Re: Giving you more characters

#121

Post by jawjay »

bostonpete wrote: post #65
ppod wrote: 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-…

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

Maybe the author already used the other 42 words for the day.

Re: Giving you more characters

#122

Post by cornstalks »

ppod wrote: 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-…

For those (like me) on mobile who can't read this (well):

"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-nine today. I saved the rest for you.

"When she doesn’t respond, I know she’s used up all her words, so I slowly whisper I love you thirty-two and a third times. After that, we just sit on the line and listen to each other breathe."

The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel

Re: Giving you more characters

#123

Post by r3bl »

hk__2 wrote: post #89
peterarmstrong wrote: post #18

This type of announcement needs to come from the CEO, not a product manager.

This is an experiment with a small group of users; it’s not affecting everyone.

Huh, I am in that group, and I have no clue how I got there, why, nor how do I get out.

Proof I guess: https://twitter.com/r3bl_/status/912800305833799686

Re: Giving you more characters

#124

Post by joelrunyon »

Shank wrote: post #35
jsnathan wrote: post #30

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…

Remember that the 140 count was based on SMS (160 total, giving 20 for the handle and a colon). It wasn't a randomly picked number.

It also correlates to the # of characters Google allows in it's headlines.

It's worth noting that there is something to the # of characters a human can scan & understand without turning it's full focus to it.

Re: Giving you more characters

#125

Post by ue_ »

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.

In my judgement it's not worse at all; we live in a world in which the content that actually has an impact on people is hidden no longer behind publishers but online centralised platforms; it is only appropriate that those publishers be held to a good standard by its users, as much as it is possible. But that's not the case; the situation is that the people who distribute the content are only beholden to the law and shareholders, both of which have very little to do with the largest and most socially important interest, which are the users.

Not that I support it, but if Twitter were a paid platform they would have more accountability to the users, not beacuse they have finally realised their place as a setter of massive trends and social control, but because the users hold the shareholders ransom by way of threatening to take away any profit.

Re: Giving you more characters

#126

Post by Spivak »

madeofpalk wrote: post #96
mintplant wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could point people to https://mastodon.social , the "flagship" instance, or directly to any other instance's homepage. There's something of a word-of-mouth aspect here, in that instances targeted toward particular communities can be more attractive to people within those communities than general-purpose social networks. There's an instance chooser wizard at https://instances.social/ , but I can see someone lookin…

> Mastodon > Mastodon hosted on mastodon.social Umm what? > What is mastodon.social? > mastodon.social is the "flagship" instance, belonging to the Mastodon project. ...sure.

> Twitter

> Twitter is hosted on twitter.com

Seems to make sense.

> What is twitter.com

> twitter.com is the "public" instance of the Twitter service.

You were one layer away from the answer. What is the Mastodon Project?

> The world’s largest free, open-source, decentralized microblogging network.

Re: Giving you more characters

#127

Post by Y_Y »

askvictor wrote: post #87
ppod wrote: 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-…

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.

Re: Giving you more characters

#129

Post by ebola1717 »

joelrunyon wrote: post #103

We don't need 140 characters. They could solve this a dozen other ways including: * Not counting links as characters. * Not including images as characters. * Improving tweet-storm capabilities. * Improve threading + response mechanisms. This is the easiest + worst improvement they could do. I hope it's not permanent.

* Links are 20 characters, flat (could be less, but users would spam 100+ links).

* Images aren't counted (unless they come from links).

* @handles were moved out of the text for replies.

* Threads have improved a lot over the past year.

* Thread composer is apparently on it's way.

Re: Giving you more characters

#130

Post by iamshariq »

ppod wrote: 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-…

spell bounding!
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