280 > 140

September 26, 2017 2:19 PM

Mr Biz Stone drops the revelation that the 2006 launched social media network known as 'Twitter' is experimenting with 280 character 'tweet' limits, as opposed to the current limit of 140 (which about 9% of tweets apparently are). This will apparently be for all languages except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. More details on their 'blog post' by Aliza Rosen and Ikuhiro Ihara.
posted by Wordshore (124 comments total)

what if they do any number of characters, but they fade from the reader's screen in 9 seconds
posted by miyabo at 2:23 PM on September 26, 2017 [17 favorites]

How about if they detect that you've posted a picture of text without linking to the source that it locks your account for a day.
posted by Space Coyote at 2:26 PM on September 26, 2017 [50 favorites]

Activating this feature should cost a $2 micropayment. However if three other Twitter users each pay $1, the feature is deactivated. The payments are cumulative on each side.

For the first year, all proceeds go to Puerto Rico.

...and we just made Trump follow through on paying out to charities.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:27 PM on September 26, 2017 [57 favorites]

Perhaps doubling the character limit will allow potus45 to create more nuanced and considered tweets oh who the heck am i kiddi
posted by Wordshore at 2:27 PM on September 26, 2017 [12 favorites]

(Witches Dot Town has a 666 character limit, just saying.)
posted by tobascodagama at 2:30 PM on September 26, 2017 [17 favorites]

Time for some game theory 1/347
posted by munchingzombie at 2:31 PM on September 26, 2017 [52 favorites]

...and we just made Trump follow through on paying out to charities.

Nonsense, he'll just bill the RNC or have his campaign funds pay for it.
posted by leotrotsky at 2:34 PM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Activating this feature should cost a $2 micropayment. However if three other Twitter users each pay $1, the feature is deactivated. The payments are cumulative on each side.

You should also allow be able to restrict to less than 140 characters based on the same dynamic. You start at 140 characters, but can be knocked down to as far as 10 if enough people want to pay to shut you the hell up.

Only for blue checkmark accounts, though.
posted by leotrotsky at 2:36 PM on September 26, 2017 [23 favorites]

Don’t need ‘em, don’t want ‘em, take ‘em back and give me a 3-minute edit window instead. The tweets I’ve deleted for typos!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 2:37 PM on September 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

love that nazis will now be able to send death threats that are twice as long
posted by burgerrr at 2:38 PM on September 26, 2017 [40 favorites]

"Twitter is about brevity" is a circular answer to why should Tweets be limited in such ways at all. And it's not about "seeing what's going on", it's about polarizing and amplifying discourse for monetary ends, abusing technology for the exploitation of the human commons. Such words of spin and rationalization are so pernicious, because the inventors of such systems actually think and believe it, their ideology and software in perfect union.
posted by polymodus at 2:39 PM on September 26, 2017 [14 favorites]

Well, I guess they had to do something besides deal with the neonazi and Russian bots. Or actually come up with a real harassment policy.

Being able to do html in tweets would be nice though.
posted by happyroach at 2:39 PM on September 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Hopefully this will give them some time to work on their chronic issues of abuse.

There's a super-prominent account they could delete for violating their TOS and make the world at least 2% better.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 2:40 PM on September 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

280 > 140

Thanks for clarifying that comparison. :)
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:42 PM on September 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

twice the hate, twice the harassment, twice the falsehoods
posted by entropicamericana at 2:43 PM on September 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Twitter is about brevity. It's what makes it such a great way to see what's happening. Tweets get right to the point with the information or thoughts that matter. That is something we will never change.

Contrarian opinion: if they're trying to encourage brevity and people are sending twice as much information in a tweet in Chinese, Japanese or Korean, then they should cut the character limit for CJK text in half and keep the latinate languages as they are.

Of course frustrating your users more isn't really a great business strategy, but I think the internal logic is sound.
posted by mmcg at 2:43 PM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

How about if they detect that you've posted a picture of text without linking to the source that it locks your account for a day.

Not sure the use as a way to respond to tweets without bringing the author into the discussion is always such a bad thing though.
posted by atoxyl at 2:46 PM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

twice the hate, twice the harassment, twice the falsehoods

Good news, everyone!*

*Offer does not apply for Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:47 PM on September 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

New 'Noveller' Allows People To Post Novels They Write During Course Of Their Day
posted by Iridic at 2:48 PM on September 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

Trying to get a comparative handle, so I picked a previous FPP of mine and above the fold it's 740 characters (about 2.6 times as long as the new/forthcoming maximum tweet length). For comments, the one by codacorolla which has more favorites than any other has 12,821 characters - or around 46 times the size of a 280 character tweet).

tldr; short 'tweets' are still short.
posted by Wordshore at 2:49 PM on September 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Only just now made the connection that the guy is named Stone and there's 14 pounds to a stone.

Which is all a coincidence but still
posted by ckape at 2:53 PM on September 26, 2017

That's the fewest number of links ever in a Wordshore FPP.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:55 PM on September 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

280 > 140

Thanks for clarifying that comparison. :)

MetaFilter: come for the snark, stay for the math. Then snark on the math.
posted by Wordshore at 2:55 PM on September 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

I'm intrigued. Some of my Twitter conversations really do strain at 140.
posted by doctornemo at 2:57 PM on September 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

This should breathe new life into Twitter, as all the good 140 character jokes were used up ages ago
posted by aubilenon at 2:58 PM on September 26, 2017 [15 favorites]

I feel for the dumb normies who reach for the 'I can't express my point in 140 characters' excuse whenever they say something indefensible.
posted by Space Coyote at 3:01 PM on September 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

I fear that the purpose of Twitter will remain just as inscrutable to me.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:02 PM on September 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Much as it isn't the solution to the great problems of the world, Twitter's original limit came before, for example, the advent of hashtags. The original length was only that way because that was basically the length of a text message--and how many people do you know now who do Twitter over SMS? So basically, the average number of characters of actual message space in a tweet has only gotten shorter since they started. It's not going to solve the problem of Trump, but it makes sense to allow people to hold something closer to normal conversations.

And then I still will never use it.
posted by Sequence at 3:04 PM on September 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

I still don't quite understand this change. Can someone get Nigel Tufnel to explain it?
posted by ckape at 3:08 PM on September 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

can we ban bad essays split into tiny chunks and written entirely in terse preachy sentences aka "tweetstorms"
posted by Gymnopedist at 3:10 PM on September 26, 2017 [20 favorites]

Wow, that much space feels a bit big. What to do with the extra?
****
odiv
Official MeFi Cabal Member (jk, there is no Cabal)
Tunnel Snakes Rule!
"Ignorance is bliss." - That guy in The Matrix
posted by ODiV at 3:10 PM on September 26, 2017 [19 favorites]

> ≠ better

if ≠ did not display for you, that's "not equal" or !=
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:11 PM on September 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

You lose... comrade.
posted by Sphinx at 3:11 PM on September 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

I think Twitter should do away with the character limit altogether, abandon the concept of "following" and make it community-based, like, say linking to "Friends". Add a few more emojis to the types of posts you can "like", ditch the hashtag, and BAM, you've got a social media product worth billions on the open market.
posted by Metro Gnome at 3:12 PM on September 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Of course, this means that when George Lucas is rehired to direct future Star Wars movies, a million tweeters can and will reply-comment with a twice as long "Nooooooooooooooooo..."
posted by Wordshore at 3:12 PM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Twitter, it’s that Twitter doesn’t understand what Twitter needs
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:14 PM on September 26, 2017 [18 favorites]

There are several reasons why I deleted my twitter account "with extreme prejudice" and the character limit is NOT one of them. (hint: half of them were the same reasons I deleted my facebook account at about the same time)

still waiting for a "social media" platform that is NOT anti-social...
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:17 PM on September 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Mastodon!
posted by Chrysostom at 3:27 PM on September 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

From what is apparently the DPRK Twitter account:

US computer company Twitter to increase characters allotted each user, allowing double previous output of witless profanity and harassment.


They're not entirely wrong, you know.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 3:28 PM on September 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Twitter, it’s that Twitter doesn’t understand what Twitter needs

it's a lot like george lucas in that respect
posted by entropicamericana at 3:34 PM on September 26, 2017

The dprk tweets are from popehat, and regularly manage to fool all sorts of /1
posted by jenkinsEar at 3:43 PM on September 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

I don't know if I'm relieved or disappointed.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 3:46 PM on September 26, 2017

popehat banned me for some sort of minor disagreement shortly after joining ye olde birbsite, so I guess I've lucked out
posted by Existential Dread at 3:52 PM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

The 140 character thing is based on text messages, with a 20 character overhead, and the 160 character text message limit is because 160 characters is about the shortest amount of space you can have a conversation in. So from the beginning, Twitter was knocked together without any care or understanding for how its design would shape its character.

That oppressive character limit meant that early Twitter adopters would have to watch what they said very carefully, and would frequently have to go back and refine their point to make it fit. This was rather good for Twitter, at first: it meant early Twitter was either banal or witty, depending on the user, and it was very difficult to have a fight because you simply didn't have the room.

That lack of care manifested itself in other ways: the idea that everyone could talk to everyone, foundational to its early appeal, is absolutely disastrous for maintaining a community. The community can't set their own standards, differentiate between who is important to Twitter and who is merely importing popularity from elsewhere, or look after their own turf. This last one is what is sinking Twitter, as abusive tweets have become an increasingly larger problem and it's increasingly clear Twitter won't do anything to stop it. (People making social software while ignoring the literature that's already written on why previous products failed, having it fail in the same ways, and then getting surprised and trying to tell people why their thing failed, is a cliche at this point. Online communities have been overrun with abuse since the 70s.)
posted by Merus at 3:54 PM on September 26, 2017 [11 favorites]

I was going to write a short tweet but I didn't have enough time so I wrote a long one #pascal
posted by chavenet at 3:55 PM on September 26, 2017 [10 favorites]

Also, I quit Twitter the other day and one of my complaints was I was over the character limit, so this was me, guys, I was the final straw.
posted by Merus at 3:55 PM on September 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

My favorite reaction so far.
posted by bigendian at 4:01 PM on September 26, 2017 [8 favorites]

Seriously though, is there any serious talk about banning a certain politician from the platform for the sake of all life on earth?
posted by gottabefunky at 4:01 PM on September 26, 2017

Seriously though, is there any serious talk about banning a certain politician from the platform for the sake of all life on earth?

Not if it drives activity and clicks to their platform, sadly. Money uber alles.
posted by Existential Dread at 4:03 PM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
What day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time;
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief."

— Polonius, Hamlet Act II Scene II Line 85-92
posted by Fizz at 4:04 PM on September 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

280 characters isn't even enough for a full 4-line .sig!
posted by mubba at 4:04 PM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

[insert Kibo reference]
posted by Chrysostom at 4:18 PM on September 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

New Twitter features in 2019:

90,000-character "novella mode"
New "auto-follow" feature seamlessly adds bespoke collection of sponsored accounts to your follow list every day
Instant checkmark-verification through your Facebook, Instagram, or Daily Stormer profile
Reply-all now automatically adds everyone you follow by default
New civics initiative from Twitter For Good automatically populates your feed with tweets from your head of state. US only.
posted by duffell at 4:20 PM on September 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

ಠ_ಠ
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 4:39 PM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Is this something I have to
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 4:40 PM on September 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

And a thousand social media managers cried out in terror.

My internal character count is so finely tuned for 140 characters. I really don't want to re-calibrate it. This line is about tweet length.
posted by matrixclown at 5:00 PM on September 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Twitter to increase its appeal to a key demographic by increasing the character limit to 1488.
posted by acb at 5:08 PM on September 26, 2017 [14 favorites]

I bet it's still gonna feel tiny compared to the five hundred characters I've gotten used to on Mastodon. Which also still has the advantage of "no ads" and "admins that actually ban Nazis".

Amusingly this comes the day after I deleted Tweetbot from my phone because I just needed a break from Twitter.
posted by egypturnash at 5:14 PM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

"140 characters ought to be enough for anybody." - oblig.
posted by alex4pt at 5:26 PM on September 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

I just checked and 280 characters is enough to hold Mefi's favourite poem. Finally.
posted by tirutiru at 5:27 PM on September 26, 2017 [9 favorites]

1/ In the name of the most holy and individual Trinity: Be it known to all, and every one whom it may concern, or to whom in any manner it may belong, That for many Years past, Discords and Civil Divisions being stir'd up in the Roman Empire, which increas'd to such a degree, that
posted by Chrysostom at 5:42 PM on September 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

This will apparently be for all languages except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

"Dear Leader, we cannot allow a Twitter gap!"
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:43 PM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Why Threatening Mass Death Won’t Get Trump Banned from Twitter

Their excuse, basically Trump is important so the TOS do not apply to him, is the dumbest shit ever.
posted by Artw at 6:11 PM on September 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

the idea that everyone could talk to everyone, foundational to its early appeal, is absolutely disastrous for maintaining a community. The community can't set their own standards, differentiate between who is important to Twitter and who is merely importing popularity from elsewhere, or look after their own turf. This last one is what is sinking Twitter, as abusive tweets have become an increasingly larger problem and it's increasingly clear Twitter won't do anything to stop it.

OK, these are different things, though. Moderation and actually dealing with abusive behavior is one thing, and Twitter does have a serious problem with that. But the fact that anyone can talk to anyone on Twitter (is innocent until proven guilty, I guess) is a feature, not a bug. It's democratizing for people to be able to contribute directly to the conversation with their heroes and giants in industry—it's led to accomplishing real things beyond making people feel special—and that hasn't changed. Can you explain why you identify that as the issue, or what your proposed change to that specifically would be?

What's different now is the sheer volume of content and the rise of the kind of abusive communities and organizations that use bots to spam duplicate content and otherwise swarm legitimate users. Raising the character limit certainly isn't going to help with either issue. An increased character limit will only add to the problem.
posted by limeonaire at 6:19 PM on September 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

I might actually tweet a bit now. I've cancelled so many tweets without sending them over the years because I just can't get the hang of wording things in 140 characters. I'll start typing out a thought and then realize that I'm going to go over the limit, get flustered about how I'm going to condense my verbiage down and just say "fuck it" and give up and hit the 'x' in the corner.
posted by octothorpe at 6:38 PM on September 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

"Gonna rip up Twitter and, uh, of course add more characters."

"Yeah? You gonna make it all 280?"

"Yeah. 280. 281. Whatever it takes."
posted by bowmaniac at 6:46 PM on September 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

So... how does this affect bilingual tweets? How will they determine which tweets/users get the 280 limit and which stick with the 140? If a tweet has 140+ characters that aren't Japanese/Chinese/Korean, does it automatically extend the limit? Will character limits be doled out based on the language you set in Settings? I'm not seeing details on this.

I understand the reasoning behind it; I just don't understand how it's going to work in practice.
posted by lesser weasel at 7:07 PM on September 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

Do people seriously, unironically expect Twitter to ban Trump? C'mon. He's the fuckin president. Even the most angelic of corporations totally unsullied by profit motive wouldn't ban him -- can you even imagine the shitshow that would erupt? Never in a million years.
posted by rifflesby at 7:07 PM on September 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

280. Hmmph. That's just 140 more characters for your hot take to get cold in.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:11 PM on September 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

I would appreciate honesty on that point rather than some bullshit. Also it renders the TOS meaningless and they should acknowledge that.
posted by Artw at 7:18 PM on September 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

Do people seriously, unironically expect Twitter to ban Trump? C'mon. He's the fuckin president. Even the most angelic of corporations totally unsullied by profit motive wouldn't ban him -- can you even imagine the shitshow that would erupt? Never in a million years.

I'm not even sure it's that reasoning: without Trump, what's the point of Twitter?
posted by prismatic7 at 7:19 PM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Do people seriously, unironically expect Twitter to ban Trump?

The thing is, they should have done it ages ago. Like when it became clear (aka immediately) that every time he called out any person in a negative way they became subject to intense harassment and death threats.

Alternatively, they could have dealt with the people issuing harassment and death threats and he would have lost his audience and gotten bored.

Anyway, their reasoning for not doing it is stupid as hell.
We hold all accounts to the same Rules, and consider a number of factors when assessing whether Tweets violate our Rules. Among the considerations is ‘newsworthiness’ and whether a Tweet is of public interest.
That's clearly not the same rules, then. If I publicly, believably threaten to bomb a school, that would probably be newsworthy at least locally. But twitter will probably still ban me. It's just that banning me wouldn't piss off nazis, so they wouldn't be angering their base.
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:45 PM on September 26, 2017 [7 favorites]

Oh if you fuck with the Nazis they will absolutely ban you, it's the even handed and reasonable thing to do you see.
posted by Artw at 8:10 PM on September 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

what if they do any number of characters, but they fade from the reader's screen in 9 seconds
posted by miyabo at 4:23 PM on September 26 [8 favorites +] [!]

I've referenced a similar concept a few times the past decade or so when thinking about the stream vs the wall metaphor. FB's "wall" is more a stream, along the lines of the Twitter stream. At the time, they length was a huge issue. It infuriated me that I couldn't treat them as LJ.

I had hoped G+ was going to go for that, but they ended up copying the stream metaphor.

This got me to thinking about identity and the stream and buddhist impermanence and how, there is no memory or history there, whereas so many details, our own little bios, could have been written on LJ (or similar blogging services, I use LJ as a reference because it's that much more personal compared to a "blog") -- but both have the "permanence"/Ground metaphor over the stream.

So - thinking about this idea I had a couple ideas to approach this idea of impermanent data.

We look on twitter as a historical record of some sort, but it's really just shit gossip 90% of the time. Most of it could be wiped in the past and nobody would really give a shit. And this idea of a self that presents itself through time moment by moment. The past erased of ones own experiences, no long term memory, trace or reference.

My first thought was a sort of "bitrot" approach where random bits of data over time would be deleted from the tweets. A literal bitrot built into the architecture of the system itself to emulate some entropic effect on things that really aren't meant to be permanent anyways.

The other was the buddhist approach this... well. What you mention :D
I was going to call it Imperma.net (just checked looks like it's taken now).

Instead of seconds, I had in mind like a 2 week period or something, where, each day, the font would gradually get lighter and lighter til it disappears, and all distant "posts" are ultimately empty, just like this moment, here.
posted by symbioid at 8:13 PM on September 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

but how would we point out that in 2013, Trump tweeted the exact opposite of what he said at a rally today?
posted by AFABulous at 8:23 PM on September 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

But the fact that anyone can talk to anyone on Twitter (is innocent until proven guilty, I guess) is a feature, not a bug. It's democratizing for people to be able to contribute directly to the conversation with their heroes and giants in industry—it's led to accomplishing real things beyond making people feel special—and that hasn't changed. Can you explain why you identify that as the issue, or what your proposed change to that specifically would be?

Sure, I'm drawing heavily from A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy, which I consider foundational for understanding online social software.

There's no difference, to the Twitter code, between abuse and people talking to celebrities, and it's impossible to write code to detect whether people are actually being abusive - Twitter is a great example of getting it completely wrong, as they keep timing out people reacting to right-wing bullshit. You can't separate social and technical issues. Now, what you can do is empower the users to decide what is and is not abusive (and what is and isn't kosher) for you, but then the question becomes 'which users', and that's a real problem because the obvious answer is wrong. Shirky refers to a problem on Usenet where you couldn't create a place to talk about Tibetan culture, because there were enough Chinese people, who didn't believe Tibet was an independent culture, to vote it down. If you say, 'mods', well that doesn't scale unless you have a lot of mods or charge $10 per user account.

Twitter deals with it by not doing a goddamn thing. Anything they do to try and clamp abuse will, by definition, block tweets - they actually do, belatedly, have a feature that mutes tweets from anyone you don't follow, which kills that whole ordinary-people-talking-to-celebrities angle.
posted by Merus at 8:27 PM on September 26, 2017

If I knew what to do differently, you can be sure I'd be talking to VCs about it
posted by Merus at 8:28 PM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

This will cut the number of posts in a long thread in half, which is good because plenty of people use twitter as a long-form blogging platform, just slicing the post up into however many tweets it takes.

Will it cut the number of posts that are simply the word “Thread.” In half? One can hope.

Still, I take a bit of pride in the number of times I have managed to express myself completely in exactly 140 characters, without abbreviations or lack of punctuation. It’s a minor art form.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:31 PM on September 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

If I knew what to do differently, you can be sure I'd be talking to VCs about it

I think one thing we desperately need to start doing differently is to stop involving VCs in the creation and maintenance of social spaces.

(I have a long list of other things we should cut them out of while we're at it, but I could probably shorten it to roughly "culture, politics, and the economy".)
posted by brennen at 8:44 PM on September 26, 2017 [5 favorites]

I wish there was a way to get the rest of the world to ignore twitter. I used to just find it an annoying bad idea, but now I hate it with a burning passion and am pretty convinced it's had a profoundly negative effect on the web, and on the whole democratic system in the US. But on the plus side... uh... jokes, I guess?
posted by whir at 9:02 PM on September 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Bilingual tweets are a really good question, lesser weasel. This article suggests the feature might be location-based at first.
posted by limeonaire at 9:28 PM on September 26, 2017

Bilingual tweets are a really good question, lesser weasel. This article suggests the feature might be location-based at first.

Glad to know Twitter thinks my IP address has any bearing on what language I shitpost in

(Thanks for the article, hadn't seen the issue addressed yet if that turns out to be the case)
posted by lesser weasel at 9:42 PM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

symbiod's idea is great I wish I remembered what it was
posted by um at 12:24 AM on September 27, 2017

I take a bit of pride in the number of times I have managed to express myself completely in exactly 140 characters, without abbreviations or lack of punctuation. It’s a minor art form.

Precisely. I'll miss the concision this forced people to employ.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:14 AM on September 27, 2017

One upside of the 280-character move is ending Twitter's inherent anti-limerick bias. Most limericks are around 160 characters.
posted by rory at 5:08 AM on September 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Bad move in general, though. People will waffle more and it'll take longer to get the gist.

If I want waffle I read blogs, dammit. (If I want pancakes, I read Metafilter.)

If tweets are moving from small to medium, where does that leave Medium?
posted by rory at 5:20 AM on September 27, 2017

One upside of the 280-character move is ending Twitter's inherent anti-limerick bias.

It is perfectly possible to write a limerick within the current Twitter limit, though. This little effort of mine is 140 exactly:

Why limerick tweets don’t abound?
The reason is simple & sound
12 squared minus 4
(Not one letter more)
Will drive you right into the ground
posted by Paul Slade at 5:45 AM on September 27, 2017 [12 favorites]

It's possible in some cases, but on average it isn't.
posted by rory at 5:47 AM on September 27, 2017

Twitter advances
Haikus' brevity over
Five-line silliness.
posted by rory at 5:58 AM on September 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

If I knew what to do differently, you can be sure I'd be talking to VCs about it

a website that automatically converts 280-nu twitter tweets into pithy and concise twitter (but with an edit window and no nazis)
posted by entropicamericana at 6:06 AM on September 27, 2017

There once was a website called Twitter
Which hoped to become a big-hitter
By encouraging all
Of our thoughts to be small.
Now they are, they're demonstrably shitter.

But lo! Now its change to 280
Holds promise of thoughts that are weighty,
With twice as much room
For our flowers to bloom.
(Got a bridge that might interest you, matey.)
posted by rory at 6:12 AM on September 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

I managed a 90 character limerick once.
posted by moonmilk at 6:15 AM on September 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

Haha. This thread is great:

@AcademiaObscura: Academics, not generally known for their concision, are among the most perturbed by Twitter's increase of the 140 character limit... (1/46)

posted by Golden Eternity at 6:34 AM on September 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

One upside of the 280-character move is ending Twitter's inherent anti-limerick bias.

There once was a man from Nantucket, a tiny, isolated island off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a summer destination with dune-backed beaches. It'

- @tomreeve

posted by AFABulous at 7:21 AM on September 27, 2017 [9 favorites]

Twitter was and still is fine for two-line throwaway poems:

Here I sit upon the shitter
Once wrote on walls, now post on Twitter.
posted by explosion at 7:31 AM on September 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

(Seriously, though, anybody who thinks that 280 characters is an objectively bad change needs to lurk on Mastodon for a while. The default character limit is 500. The end result is that you get just as much brevity but a hell of a lot fewer X/20 threads.)
posted by tobascodagama at 7:36 AM on September 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
What day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time;
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief.

… is 287 characters. You'd still have to sub & for every 'and' (277) or ∴ for 'therefore' (279). (Twitter has upped my typography game by necessitating that sort of text replacement).
posted by fedward at 7:42 AM on September 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

(If you do both you can append " - Polonius" and end at exactly 280.)
posted by fedward at 7:46 AM on September 27, 2017

Some fun technical details:

• It seems that the only limit enforced by the server is 280 Unicode code points, regardless of account or language. The client imposes additional restrictions, but these are easily bypassed to post 280-character tweets from any account in any language (by modifying the client code, or by communicating directly to the server). For example, my friend wrote a Firefox extension that lets any user post 280-character tweets through the web site.
• The client counts Unicode code points from the range U+0000 through U+10FF as single characters, U+1100 to U+FFFF (which includes the Chinese/Japanese/Korean scripts, plus many others) as “double” characters, and U+10000 and higher as single characters again.
• The client code also allows for fractional characters (though it seems this capability isn't currently used), and if you are using a CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) version of the UI, the displayed character count shows Latin characters as half characters.

posted by mbrubeck at 9:15 AM on September 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

Here I sit upon the shitter
Once wrote on walls, now post on Twitter.

This prompted me to wonder if anyone has done empirical research that would help us understand what impact (if any) the ubiquity of smartphones has had on the prevalence of bathroom graffiti.
posted by nickmark at 10:01 AM on September 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

Great, can we now get back to showing me my feed chronologically.
posted by dreamling at 10:02 AM on September 27, 2017 [8 favorites]

its not called shitposting for nothin'
posted by entropicamericana at 10:02 AM on September 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

dreamling: "Great, can we now get back to showing me my feed chronologically."

If you use Android, use Twidere as your client, it's great.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:42 AM on September 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

I used this to give myself 280. and I celebrated appropriately. (my quick math was wrong and somehow that was 8 short of 280)
posted by numaner at 12:38 PM on September 27, 2017

287 characters

Including trailing spaces I wasn't seeing. Sigh. See this tweet.
posted by fedward at 1:07 PM on September 27, 2017

the 160 character text message limit is because 160 characters is about the shortest amount of space you can have a conversation

text-messages were not a green field feature on the network, but were an appropriation of some unused bytes in data packets that were already being sent.

The key idea for SMS was to use this telephone-optimized system, and to transport messages on the signalling paths needed to control the telephone traffic during periods when no signalling traffic existed. In this way, unused resources in the system could be used to transport messages at minimal cost. However, it was necessary to limit the length of the messages to 128 bytes (later improved to 160 seven-bit characters) so that the messages could fit into the existing signalling formats.

posted by idiopath at 1:37 PM on September 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

A solution without a problem. It reduces Twitter's distinctiveness, upsetting core users in search of those who won't be swayed.
posted by mountmccabe at 1:42 PM on September 27, 2017

I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So, I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarte…
posted by ckape at 2:49 PM on September 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's kinda strange. I've had Twitter accounts since the launch year, for various purposes. I still have one on which I half-heartedly and not-frequently tweet and (more often) retweet games, games in learning, a few other bits and bobs and academic research stuff.

But if the whole service collapsed tomorrow and never came back up, or was shut down, or (and this would be hilarious in some ways) bought out by Facebook and immediately shuttered, then I would be one of the first to cheer, because of the many well-documented - as they are long-term - problems with it.

Unsure if I am contradictory, or just a plain hypocrite.
posted by Wordshore at 2:55 PM on September 27, 2017

It seems that the only limit enforced by the server is 280 Unicode code points, regardless of account or language. The client imposes additional restrictions, but these are easily bypassed to post 280-character tweets from any account in any language (by modifying the client code, or by communicating directly to the server). For example, my friend wrote a Firefox extension that lets any user post 280-character tweets through the web site.

If one didn't care about the uninitiated being able to read one's expoundings, one could theoretically take text, gzip/bzip2 it, encode the resulting high-density binary blob with base65536 and tweet that. To random users, it'd look like a mess of random characters from various scripts, but those who had the browser extension for decoding it would see 400+ characters of text.

One could even add an encryption step, giving Twitter channels not unlike the RF spectrum.
posted by acb at 3:17 PM on September 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

then I would be one of the first to cheer, because of the many well-documented - as they are long-term - problems with it.

What does it say about social media in general that I still find Twitter to be one of the more enjoyable ones? I mean:

Instagram - don't get it, for the most part
Facebook - dull, mostly good for remaining aware of extended family and being very obviously surveilled
Youtube - everyone uses it for something but it's got more right-wing fucks than any of 'em
Reddit, if that counts - also filled with terrible people, at best a (not exceptional) hosting platform for niche fora or a version of MeFi with way more terrible people

Twitter has no clue how to manage their community or even how to provide features people want to use, but at least it has some folks I like making dumb jokes.
posted by atoxyl at 6:46 PM on September 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

I find Twitter useful for news - breaking stuff, or "hey, here's something you might not have heard about." I have a private account, and I usually don't read the responses, so I don't get interactions with assholes.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:14 PM on September 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

So I guess SMS delivery of your feed is done now?
posted by wierdo at 10:14 PM on September 27, 2017

Twitter, With Accounts Linked to Russia, to Face Congress Over Role in Election
posted by Artw at 6:21 AM on September 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

So I guess SMS delivery of your feed is done now?

I used to have their SMS service on my flip phone (until 2015! woooo!), then around 2012-2013 it abruptly cut off and I couldn't create tweets by texting them anymore. At least I haven't tried lately so I don't know if they brought it back. I can still post FB statuses by texting their SMS number now, but I couldn't get FB notifications as SMS anymore around that same time.
posted by numaner at 12:46 PM on September 28, 2017

@tederick:

All true Canadians know there is only one proper use of the new 280 character limit on Twitter. |
Tous les vrais Canadiens savent qu'il n'y a qu'une bonne utilisation de la nouvelle limite de 280 caractères sur Twitter.

posted by Golden Eternity at 5:57 AM on October 1, 2017 [6 favorites]

Look at this idiot:

@biz Y'all pile on us. You really think the issue doesn't weigh on us? And you're so dismissive of the Trust and Safety team. We're all people.
posted by Artw at 2:44 PM on October 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

@UnburntWitch So are we.

And hey, several hours after she publicly called @biz out, by pure coincidence, the harasser that was publishing her nude photos was temp-banned. Amazing.
posted by happyroach at 10:48 PM on October 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

@biz Y'all pile on us. You really think the issue doesn't weigh on us? And you're so dismissive of the Trust and Safety team. We're all people.

i saw that this weekend and its cluelessness still takes my breath away
posted by entropicamericana at 8:01 AM on October 2, 2017 [3 favorites]

I mean, at least people piling on is a concern for them, right?
posted by Artw at 8:28 AM on October 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

one would think biz's $200 million net worth would make for an effective cushion
posted by entropicamericana at 8:36 AM on October 2, 2017 [2 favorites]

In regards to Twidere, mentioned above -- I downloaded it and got a very hostile interface that then turned into chinese-only text when I clicked around. Does anyone have recommendations for something that would show my timeline in time order with no likes, that I wouldn't be scared to put my password into?
posted by tavella at 10:04 AM on October 2, 2017

Twitter is fairly aggressive about shutting down apps that use their API and duplicate or replace their core web site functionality. Even if you find one you'll only get to use it until Twitter finds it, pretty much.
posted by idiopath at 12:10 PM on October 3, 2017

The Android version of Twidere is still working for me just fine (in English, even), so I dunno what's wrong with tavella's installation.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:12 PM on October 3, 2017