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Twitter Expands Microblogging To 280 Characters But Some Fear It Would Cause More Trouble Than Good

By Erika Miranda
Published on: 17:37 PST, Sep 26, 2017

Twitter has decided to allow a select group of people to express their ideas more with 280 characters but many seem to be unimpressed by the update.

According to an official blog for the social media platform, the company decided to expand the character limit “to express yourself” better. Based on the write-up from product manager Aliza Rosen, the idea is to ease social media users of the recurring dilemma of cramming their thoughts into 140 characters.

“We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on the platform, so we’re doing something new: we’re going to try out a longer limit, 280 characters,” Rosen wrote.

Interestingly, the Twitter update does not cover those who use languages with characters that convey more information in a single character such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. She even shared a graph that reveals the statistics for Tweets written in Japanese and English to prove that point.

“We see that a small percent of Tweets sent in Japanese have 140 characters (only 0.4%). But in English, a much higher percentage of Tweets have 140 characters (9%). Most Japanese Tweets are 15 characters while most English Tweets are 34,” the article read.

Because of this, the company decided to roll out the update to test in a small group of users with double the character limit and launched the hashtag 280 characters.

While the intention was to provide more freedom for social media users in expressing their thoughts, many people think it was a bad idea.

At one point, some criticized the idea and noted that it would only give bashers, social media trolls, and more ammunition to use in spreading hate online.

https://twitter.com/HITEXECUTIVE/status/912829495043698688

Some prefer to see an “Edit” button on Twitter once and for all.

https://twitter.com/MattShiversVO/status/912822152000413696

Others, like celebrity host Ellen DeGeneres, decided to make fun of the update.

But most of all, people think Twitter expanding posts to 280 characters will mean more unbelievable Tweets from notorious users like American President Donald Trump.

https://twitter.com/Wanderlust1124/status/912836741165408257

According to CEO Jack Dorsey, founders got the idea to limit posts to only 140 characters on the social media platform from old-school text messaging which only allows 160 characters per message before it is split in two, based on a report from CNN.

In fact, he believes that the character limit has “become a beautiful constraint.”

“It inspires creativity and brevity… We will never lose that feeling.”

However, it also limits the user’s ability to express his thoughts fully and completely as many decide to screenshot notes and texts to get around the character limit. This is why the company decided to try increasing it to 280 characters.

“We see [people] taking screenshots of text and tweeting it. Instead, what if that text… was actually text? We’re not going to be shy about building more utility and power into Twitter for people.”

Either way, it is clear that many—if not most—Twitter users are not very eager to see Tweets twice the previous length. Fortunately, there is still a chance to let the company know it shouldn’t happen as they are now asking if allowing double the current character limit in a post is a good idea.

https://twitter.com/Update_Ideas/status/912907072051777537

Would you like Twitter to increase the character limit to 280? Sound off in the comments below.

[Featured Image by pixelfit/iStock]

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