Why Twitter Should Keep Its 140 Character Limit

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Twitter wants to expand its 140 character limit, and that’s wrong.

In case you haven’t already heard, Twitter is contemplating expanding their current 140 character limit to 10,000 characters. That’s right, 10,000. That’s a lot of characters. Have you ever wondered what 10,000 characters would look like? Wonder no more:

This is 10,000 characters. Twitter currently employs a 140 character limit.

That’s way too many, right? In case that didn’t convince you, here are a couple more reasons why Twitter should stick to its 140 character limit:

1) It would completely change the personality of Twitter

Right now Twitter is its own unique platform; it has its own special place at the social media table. When scrolling through your feed, you are quickly sifting through information at a pace that no other social media platform can match. In 10 minutes, you can catch up on all the news and information you need. Twitter’s 140 character limit perfectly enables this. Expanding the character limit to 10,000 characters would completely take away the staccato flavor of Twitter. Without the 140 character limit, what is stopping Twitter from becoming just another social media platform where users can share photos, videos and lengthy posts? Speaking of…

2) It would feel too much like Facebook

Again, the 10,000 character limit would enable, nay, encourage lengthy posts. With that, Twitter will become another social media platform where your uncle can post too many pictures of his home brewery and write long-winded (and usually cringe worthy) political rants. But there is already a popular social media platform for that, Facebook. And let’s be honest, Facebook is pretty good at what it does, with over 1.04 BILLION users logging in every day as of December 2015. While Twitter still does pretty well with 320 million users, it is not in the same realm as Facebook. If Twitter wants to compete with Facebook, it needs to either offer something unique, or it needs to be able to beat Facebook at its own game. Neither of those are currently happening.

3) “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

Once again, Twitter’s forte is its ability to be short and sweet. Bogging down tweets with 10,000 characters would make scrolling through your feed feel like a chore, not to mention how much more time-consuming it would become to read all those long tweets. As a result of this, users could be forced to choose which social media platforms they check in their free time. Forcing users to choose might not bode well for Twitter.

 

Do you agree? Do you want Twitter to increase their character limit to 10,000 characters? Comment below to voice your opinion!

 

Note: this entire post contains 2,628 characters. Let that sink in.

Jonathan Reistad
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