@Twitter 280
One outside-the-tweet-box idea for Twitter’s 280 character issue
The world doesn’t need another post about Twitter’s move from 140 characters to 280 characters. He said, as he started to write such a post…
Look, as I’ve noted before, ultimately, I think this will be fine. The world will go on. And Twitter has (should have?) more pressing character issues — with the people on Twitter, not the glyphs in the status box. That said…
Count me in the camp that so far doesn’t like what #Twitter280 is doing to Twitter. It’s not the content, it’s the product. Back in September, I pointed out what I thought could be an issue at the time:
My main concern with all this is scan-ability. I think it’s unheralded, but the fact that you can open Twitter and quickly read dozens of items is awesome. On what other service can you do this? Maybe Drudge Report? Maybe that’s why it also works! For some people!
To me, so far with #Twitter280, this is indeed an issue.
I know, I know, cue the world’s smallest violins. I’m complaining about not wanting to scan an extra sentence or two. But as you scroll through a feed, this adds up. And, of course, it leads to more scrolling.
Twitter will say that this is a non-issue because images, GIFs, and the like already take up more space in the feed. That may be true. But images, GIFs, and the like are much easier to scan at a glance than words.¹
This is why I still like my earlier thought about what to do here:
If they’re going to do this, I would rather see something like 10K (or unlimited) characters. And then simply snip the tweet down to 140 characters for the feed (either manually or automatic). In other words, long text would be just another payload. Just like images or GIFs or what not.
I know that’s easier said than done — would you really want all these cut-off messages? (No, ideally for tweets longer than 140 characters, a user could pick the key 140 character snippet… Or write a 140 character summary! But again, I know this would be getting conceptually challenging at this point.)
Another idea arose this morning on, where else, Twitter.
I actually sent my first 280 character tweet this morning. (Well, my first serious one that actually takes advantage of the new character count.) And I have to say, it was nice to have the extra space to flesh out a thought! But the key to me is that it was a response to another tweet.
This led to an interesting back-and-forth with Adam Michela:
So what if #Twitter280 was just for replies? This would solve a large part of the scan-ability issue mentioned above. Scanning my feed now, I see far fewer replies than actual tweets (which squares with what I believe I normally see).² Also, you would only see 280 character tweets in your feed if you followed both the user tweeting and the person they’re replying to (and as such, you’d probably care more about such a back-and-forth to begin with).
More importantly, it does feel like the times where I really want to say something more than 140 characters long on Twitter is in response to another tweet. And I feel like I’ve seen this time and time again in my feed throughout the years: people expressing frustration that it’s hard to respond to something in a thoughtful way in 140 characters.
Anyway. Just a 3,000+ character thought.
¹ Another idea: what if Twitter forced a line break after the first 140 characters? May be silly, but I think this would make things more readable as well. Those big blocks of text are ungainly.
² Side note: I wonder how the ratio of tweets-to-replies in feeds has changed over time. And I wonder if #Twitter280 will change it further!
