Twitter is known and liked for its unique feature that used to be found only in the Short Message Service (SMS) i.e. 140 character limit. Initially, this micro blogging arrangement wasn’t so-adaptable for the users but gradually this trend became so-cool-to-use that it was almost impossible to imagine Twitter without this feature. It’s been ten years now and the CEO Jack Dorsey has announced that Twitter is going to keep this character limit, though there were many speculations regarding exceeding its character limit to 10000. This idea was not welcomed by the used-to-140 characters-users of Twitter mostly because of the fact that twitter would lose its identity as a micro blogging site and also it would make it more complicated and irrelevant among others. Twitter needed to stand out among its competitors and that exactly what its makers didn’t fail to understand, which seems to reflect in their decision.
For some it might look like stubborn and rigid decision, but if we see its overall usage and functioning it looks like a compromise that was too dumb to be made, therefore refused to be considered. On the contrary, it would have been a big drawback for its users and more importantly would have given another reason to its competitors to look down upon Twitter as it would have left with no unique characteristic to offer.
Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter feels the same about its in-built terseness and considers it as its soul, which they wouldn’t like to lose at any cost. He has declared twitter an essential platform that would remain as effective as it has been since a decade. Also, in long run 140 characters are going to become a boon for Twitter and others as well, even for those who are still in support of exceeding the limit. Reason being so much of intention that social media craves for from its users, but time and precision being the catalyst of this medium have few restrictions that cannot be ignored rather have to be considered like Twitter has. Short attention and optimum use of time are the main constraints and dominant factors of social media platform; hence it’s important that this must be incorporated in other platforms as its going to be the next big demand from the users’ end. Whether its micro-blogging or blogging, attention span is getting compressed, things needs to be adjusted accordingly.
