Twitter’s 280 Characters Limit: What are the Implications it holds for our Future ?

Twitter just crammed out some space to fit its miniature packer and we are just not ready!

I mean who does that, I happen to love 140 characters as much as I love 2 and a half men!

(Men are all words, you can read it again now!)

I hope the test fails and we get back to our beloved creative ways but I guess Twitter also can see the overwhelming response by people.

(Darn you guys!)

In a blog post, Twitter made sure that all we see is the bright positive light at the end of their “tunnelsome” words.

“Our research shows that the character limit is a major cause of frustration among people tweeting in English, when people won’t have to cram their thoughts into this small space, they might just be more of a human instead of bots”.

As much as 9 percent of English tweets are of exactly 140 characters which means that people have to break their sentences using that stupid (1/n) at the end, it happens with me all the time where I try to find the remaining part of the sentence in the already doomed world of thermonuclear war!

Arre Nuclear war se yaad aaya Twitter hasn’t yet introduced this new update to its Japanese counterparts!

Well, they happen to attribute it to the following graph, but I guess there is a large conspiracy theory. (Maybe Dan Brown’s next book will help us with that!)

(Credits: Beloved Twitter)

Oh, I forgot, China and Korea also weren’t spared, guess these guys just meant it in a good way, it’s all in my crooked brain and the quintessential need for war all the time.It’s probably because Asian languages are more sophisticated and require less space to express your emotions.

(Isn’t it originally God’s way of minimalist design to make the people difficult to separate? Next time you see an Asian, please don’t pretend to remember him from somewhere!)

Coming back at it, you can know whether you have made it to their list of random elite customers or not by opening Twitter and then clicking on the “Magic Quill”.
I didn’t make it this time, well guess what? I’m happy whatsoever!

Why Exactly was There a Limit At First Place?

When the world was in total chaos i.e. not many apps, tweets were sent out using the normal text messages which happen to accommodate not more than 160 characters. Hence, Twitter set the limit of sentences to 140 + 20 for the damn username.

That was not it, people discovered their inner creativity just by having a constraint to fulfil, suddenly the words became more powerful and beaming with a lot of brevity and meaningfulness.

So, Twitter played along and people were seen to have formed a formidable relationship with the characters limit until the end of 2015 when Twitter gave it a thought of increasing the limit to as much as 10000 characters.

Think of Twitter becoming Facebook, you sir have jeopardized my power to imagine right there!

Thank God Jack Dorsey pulled the plug before it’s happening, otherwise so many words would definitely make you look fluffy.

Why they Want to Change it Now?

Oh man, you got me all too sappy, but limits are just arbitrary frame of references that can change from time to time and mindsets to mindsets. So, how exactly were you able to figure out that 140 is less and 280 is good enough?

Oh, you’re the CEO, guess I don’t get a say in it!

Think for a second, you are a human and wouldn’t compromise with expressing your thoughts so you start writing on Twitter, only to realize that you need to break the text.
How sad?

So, instead of going on with it, you do some introspection and try to fit your thoughts within that constraint, doesn’t it make you a simple nice fella for editing out your thoughts before speaking?

Twitter might have been thinking about it all the time so what they did all these years?

Instead of making some changes to the original character limit, they agreed on barring the username and images from scanning along with handing out the best tweets on top followed by the “mediocre” tweets in a reverse chronological order!

Why isn’t it Working Anymore?

Donald Trump wanted to expand the limit!

The below piece of art can show you how many people on Twitter actually love him.

Trust me, Twitter bosses are not fanatics of Mr. Trump, as when asked in an interview whether the POTUS has made it to the list, they simply chose to be a little ambiguous and said that

“We won’t know until the update goes live!”
Real nice Twitter, you are learning from us!

What Next?

We are yet to fully grasp whether it will make the tweeples more active or what!
But God forbid, keep those memes coming guys.