Why Twitter should relax the 140 character limit

Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, recently stirred the anthill by drawing an obvious conclusion to the widespread practice of creating an image of text and using the image’s URL to circumvent the 140 character limit on Twitter: people need longer tweets.

As he put it in a tweet with an image displaying much more than 140 characters of text,

We’ve spent a lot of time observing what people are doing on Twitter, and we see them taking screenshots of text and tweeting it Instead, what if that text…was actually text? Text that could be searched. Text that could be highlighted. That’s more utility and power.

That’s the simplest argument: people are skirting the limit anyway. Why perpetuate a phoney limitation? Historical continuity? Some aesthetic notion of purity? Or the fear that eliminating this SMS-derived boundary will turn Twitter into Facebook?

Lastly, I have long advocated the creation of a ‘Twitter for Work’, and with the enormous popularity of Slack, and the imminent arrival of Facebook for Work, Twitter should get a move on. And that enterprise solution requires more than 140 characters, just like people watching television, or arguing about politics.

This is a change that’s long overdue.

All in favor? Aye!

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