It is a mini-revolution for the social network
More than 10 years after its birth and plagued by great financial difficulties, Twitter tries to revive itself by doubling the length of its messages. A change that sparked an avalanche of comments on the network, but left analysts skeptical. "Trying to fit your thoughts into a single tweet - we've all gone through it - it's painful," the group wrote on its official blog Tuesday.
"We want everybody around the world to be able to express themselves easily on Twitter, so we're doing something new: we're going to try a bigger limit, 280 characters," says the American social network, which says this functionality is currently reserved for only a few users, before a possible generalization. "It's a small change, but a big step for us. 140, it was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character limit of SMS. I am proud to see how the teams have been attentive to solve a real problem that people have when trying to tweeter. And while maintaining our conciseness, our rapidity and our very essence ! "Tweeted the founding boss Jack Dorsey in a message in ... 280 characters.
This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! twitter.com/twitter/status…
"Cause of frustration"
The lengthening concerns only the messages in Latin characters, explains the network, because it is mainly in English, Spanish, Portuguese or French that the limit of 140 characters seems to sometimes concern users, unlike those who tweet in Japanese, Korean or Chinese. According to the group, 9% of English tweets reached 140 characters (0.4% in Japanese) and "the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people who tweet in English." "When people do not have to put their thoughts in 140 characters, and even have margin, the announcement sparked an avalanche of reactions on the network, including the NSA, the US national security agency, tweeting: "We're going to need a bigger data center, while others are worried with humor from the prospect of seeing the American president, already frenzied twitters, have more space:
Good. God. Donald. Trump. A. 280. Characters, "wrote a user.
Lifting shields
Forced to renew due to financial difficulties - he lost another 116 million dollars in the second quarter, and the number of active twitters stagnates around 330 million - Twitter walks on eggs: early 2016, the hypothesis of the abandonment of the dogma of 140 characters had provoked a lifting of shields of certain users, fearing that the service loses its soul. "We know that there can be a sentimental attachment to the 140 characters ... But we tried (the new limit) and we fell in love with this new length", justifies Twitter, whose main audience is elected officials, journalists and celebrities.
But according to analysts, it is unlikely that this mini-revolution announced is the panacea. "The longer they lengthen (the length of the tweets), the more they start to look like Facebook . And if they start to look like Facebook, then Facebook will get them out of the game, it's already too late: at the time of virtual reality and vocal assistants, tweets are outdated. They are trying everything to try to monetize the service, but the problem is that it was not designed for that. "Twitter is struggling to straighten out as everyone moves in other directions,".
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