I still hate 280 chars. Here’s why

280 chars — Image courtesy: http://wersm.com/twitter-expands-character-limit-to-280-in-global-test/

When Twitter announced their plan to double the char limit for tweets, it seemed like the dumbest idea ever. Why would anyone want to kill the very thing that made a platform unique?

Twitter’s reasoning was that even with a double the number of chars — a lot of users were going to continue tweeting the way they used to. Creatively & with 140 chars.

It’s been true to a certain extent. After the initial euphoria where i tweeted this, i’ve mostly used 140 chars to tweet stuff. But that’s just me.

Only use i could find for 280 chars!

The most common arguments against the 280 char limit were:

1. It would kill the creativity of twitter
2. It makes tweets difficult to scan/read inside the feed.
3. If you want to write a blog there’s medium. If you want to have a deep debate — write an essay & share a link.

Twitter got a whole bunch of snark for this.

Ouch!

The argument in favor of 280 chars:

1. More chars means your thoughts have more depth & breadth

Let’s examine what’s happened a month later..

A lot of users have taken to the 280 char limit & twitter has changed. The biggest adopters are brands and news publications. It’s definitely become much more difficult to scan your feed.

Whoa, am I reading a novel?

However it’s not as bad since images are given a lot of importance in the feed and break it frequently.

Images break the feed so it’s not that bad.

The beauty of the old format was that most of the time you’ll tweet short, concise thoughts which were easy to read. The few times you wanted to tweet something bigger, you’ll could post a picture. Also it meant brands didn’t post entire press releases as a blob of text!

Threads used to be so much fun

Easy to read!

TD:LR —

A month later i still hate the change. What do you think?

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