Twitter Officially Expands Its Character Count To 280 Starting Today (techcrunch.com) 98
Twitter is rolling out an update around the world to allow users to post 280-character tweets. The company first announced the controversial plan to move beyond its traditional 140 characters back in September, noting at the time how a longer character count allowed users to express more of their thoughts without running out of room to tweet. TechCrunch reports: At the time of its original announcement, the company cited data backing up its decision that referenced how the character constraints impacted users differently, depending on their language. Twitter said that those who tweeted in languages like Japanese, Korean and Chinese were able to express around double the amount of information in a single character, compared with users who spoke English, Spanish, Portuguese or French, for example. In today's blog post about the public launch of 280 characters, Twitter aims to assuage people's fears that their timelines will fill with expanded tweets. The company said that during the trial period, people continued to tweet below 140 characters most of the time -- after the novelty of being able to use more characters wore off. Specifically, Twitter found that only 5 percent of tweets were sent out with more than 140 characters and of those, only 2 percent were over 190 characters.
cue the Trump tweet conversation (Score:2)
Won't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump doesn't have the attention span to type that many characters.
covfefe!!!!
Re:Won't matter (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Won't matter (Score:5, Funny)
... under the current constitution.
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The reason Mr. Von Clownstick uses Twitter is obvious. If he talked to reporters they would ask him questions, so he doesn't do that too much. Of course he lies then as well, but if he talked to reporters as often as he tweeted, well the breath and scope of his lies would be more obvious to even the most clueless. (Okay perhaps not to the most clueless, but at least to more people.)
As far as the 280 character count goes, well, why not? It might even be long enough for a single tweet to contradict itsel
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Going by your post, I bet you also believe that Trump dumped a box of fish food into a koi pond and it was an international incident.
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And I'll bet you don't. Idiot.
When you're a real idiot, and the people who pushed it retracted it. Yes you might be a partisan hack, or just an idiot. [youtu.be]
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Say what you want, but it was under Trump that Saudi Arabia allowed women to drive cars and arrested ISIS-funding billionaires and princes. Totally co-incidentally and most likely unrelated to funding terrorists, these same guys have also funded the Clinton Foundation.
On the negative side, my stocks are up only up 23% this year. I thought Trump promised 50%. And the fucking wall? The prototypes are epic and all, but there's about 100 feet of the actual wall that was built to date, not 1000 miles.
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Can you name two things that have not improved under Trump?
Besides my own health and welfare?
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Comrade I hate to tell you but nobody will give you any rubles for trolling slashdot in 2017.
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Comrade I hate to tell you but nobody will give you any rubles for trolling slashdot in 2017.
Then why are you still here? Pro-bono?
I come from a time of 16 bit processing. (Score:2)
I am from a time of 16 bit processing my friend.
In soviet russia rubles troll me.
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Number of daily gun deaths.
The economy (no, he doesn't get credit for Obama's last fiscal year).
America's reputation and standing in the world.
The environment.
Worker protections.
Consumer protections.
Or any of the things you listed.
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Meh.
Somebody already figured out how to make a 30,000 character post on Twitter [mashable.com].
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I love that as much as Slashdotters hate Trump, they LITERALLY post about him in EVERY THREAD no matter how related or not he is to the discussion. And nobody ever mods them as off-topic.
It's like Reddit hating on Justin Bieber saying "they're shoving him down our throats" except the only time you ever even hear about him... is on Reddit.
Re: cue the Trump tweet conversation (Score:2)
Oh boy... (Score:1)
Twice the amount of incoherent ramblings from the 6 year old occupying the Oval Office. How about limiting it to 14 characters instead? Would at least make it more interesting.
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Oh man! You better alert Congress! Did you know that you have to be 35 years old to be President???
Your revelation would shock the world and give us a clear path to impeaching the traitorous orange Ooma Loompa with tiny hands who likes to be peed on and likes to harass women and probably hates black people and, I heard, likes pineapple on pizza!
Anonymous Coward has cracked the case!!!
feeds fill up (Score:2)
So, people were worried an extra 140 characters would fill up my feed? When half of the tweets I see have giant photos filling up ten times as much space, I'm hardly worried about an extra line and a half a text.
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What if it's a picture of 281 characters?
Re: feeds fill up (Score:2)
Actually, that sounds exactly like Twitter.
xkcd my arse (Score:3)
Is that you, Gabe? [penny-arcade.com]
2008? Really?
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Something about Hognoxious, Poperazo, and MightyMartian.
I'm sure an AC will come along and explain it to me.
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Something about Hognoxious, Poperazo, and MightyMartian.
I'm sure an AC will come along and explain it to me.
Don't sell yourself short.
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Do we walk into a bar, and the bartender is Creamer?
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Gold mine? Of funding, sure. They're still completely unable to monetize the platform in any sort of sustainable or profitable way. The only useful reports advertisers get about Twitter is how many of the accounts are fake.
They'll be dead in a few years.
Which means that... (Score:3)
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They'll have to wait for the next President, because this one doesn't know how to construct a sentence longer than 140 characters! Believe me!
So now its three incoherent words plus 200 Emoji? (Score:2)
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David Frum - Principled (ie, not a party mouthpiece) conservativism
The Marshall Project - Criminal Justice System watchdog
Picard Tips - Management and Life tips from the perspective of Jean-Luc Picard
Benjamin Dixon - Principled liberalism/progressivism
These are more specific to where I am, but there's probably a local equivalent or three where you are:
Fred Melo, Reporter - Local beat reporter who's on top of everything
Arif Hasan - Local footbal
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There are a bunch of biologists I follow that would be interesting if you're a biologist.
@ASlavitt has some interesting if biased healthcare reform points.
Green mountain, you might enjoy @swear_trek and @NoContextTrek
twice as much to censor, then. (Score:2)
oh, my (Score:2)
I think we just reached criticality, guys. Imagine the dose of Trumptweets doubled.
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I think we just reached criticality, guys. Imagine the dose of Trumptweets doubled.
On the up side, Trump will now have room to express two incomplete thoughts.
"dot dot dot" (Score:2)
god I hope this doesn't kill the "dot dot dot" part of The Late Show. It's my fave.
280 limit? why not 640? (Score:5, Funny)
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640 Kharacters ought to be enough for anyone...
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640 characters isn't enough, Bill Gates! :P
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It's 240 because that amount can comfortably fit on a phone screen at a reasonable font size. People were just posting images of their ~240 character messages instead of actual text, which is bad for Twitter because text in images can't easily be searched.
Nobody will ever need 640 characters (Score:1)
Let's hard code that in.
Seriously, though, the SMS platform Twitter is using a Short Messaging System originally used by submarines to avoid being spotted, and it's only so big. Packet sizes do put an upper limit on the protocols, and 128 characters is more of a reference to routing overhead. 280 also fits in, but was avoided for submarines as the technology to triangulate the sender generally failed under 128.
You can stuff a 640 character packet in a larger one, but then you have to chunk the data.
I for
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Original Reason For the Limit (Score:1)
It's my impression that the reason for the limit was that this utilized extra space in the packets which are sent from towers to phone and back, with "Are you there?" and "Yes, I'm here." type messages. They're used to enable phones to link to nearby towers for connecting to the phone network.
Admittedly, sending pix (apparently quite popular) vastly exceeds this size. I don't tweet but I have on occasion sent and received text messages, which I presume is handled similarly.
Time for the apps to catch up. (Score:3)
Most apps are programmed for the 140 characters. I'm pretty sure most people, for the time being, will be tweeting at the 140 characters.
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... or the Bots (Score:2)
... and I'm pretty sure most bots, will for the time being will be tweeting at the 140 characters.
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Imgur (Score:2)
Meanwhile anyone with anything longer to say can just take a screenshot and tweet that.
What a bunch of fucking morons.
280 or 35000 (Score:1)
280 for most people, 35000 for a select few.
In other news, equally important (Score:5, Insightful)
I've lost my toenail clippers.
Why? (Score:2)
Why not be like the limited SMSes with Twitter?
You fools! (Score:3)
You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could that they didn't stop to think if you should.