Comments on: Breaking the 140 barrier

By: Chris Grundemann

Chris Grundemann — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:04:36 +0000

I agree with your thoughts of adding meta-data for retweets, building them into the application makes sense at this point and would free us to make more of them – which is one of the greatest intents of the service: to share ideas. I don’t consider that a very major change and not a true breaking of the 140 char limit (which I like – if you have more to say, write a blog and post the link ).

As far as the URL shorteners, I believe that they will be used regardless of char limits, on Twitter or else wher. Furthermore, many of the issues with them can (and should) be addressed by the shortening services or through browsers – preview panes, etc.

By: Han

Han — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:59:07 +0000

JZ,

Keep it as it is, short and focused.

Han

By: aluxeterna

aluxeterna — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:15:38 +0000

Very important points here. The URL-shortening issue alone I think demands special attention from The Twitterlords, for it makes the interwebs too dependent on go-betweens. Twitter would remain appropriately minimal if it were to take a “140 characters + a link” approach.

By: Follow Friday: Twitter’s display of relations affection? | Digital serendipities - Danica Radovanovic's thoughts about technology, media, life

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:08:35 +0000

[...] boyd’s view on the communication phenomena of retweeting and Jonathan Zittrain’s thoughts on technical 140 characters barriers on Twitter. Having in mind that retweeting process is one of the conversation practices on Twitter, the [...]

By: Carlo

Carlo — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:18:23 +0000

Twitter itself does have a special “RT” functionality; it’s just two letters that many people have come to use to say that they’re repeating something they saw elsewhere — and giving attribution for it.

I think you mean Twitter *doesn’t* have a retweet function…

By: Jon Garfunkel

Jon Garfunkel — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:13:20 +0000

JZ,

If I can summarize the work I did with Semantic Social Media Construction to make it *much* simpler.

There are basically two types of tweets/status-messages:
Temporal and Conversational.
The temporal ones are often of the nature of someone announcing that they are somewhere, or are going somewhere, or are reporting exclusive news. These are the sorts of things that should fit under 140 characters and should well go to the mobile phones.

The conversational ones are everything else: responses, retweets, URL finds, ongoing live-tweeting… there is no real reason to broadcast these over SMS to followers, so the 140-limit is unnecessarily constrictive.

Twitter needs to figure this out, because Facebook generally has mastered the conversational messages.

Jon

By: Carla Casilli

Carla Casilli — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:01:12 +0000

I see where you’re going with your idea; communication is less effective when stilted, repurposed and RT’d. As you note, Twitter has a hard stop at 140 characters. That limit may seem somewhat capricious, but it is, I believe, its killer feature.

Limiting people to 140 characters tends to compel them to condense their thoughts—sometimes to a density of a neutron star. Obviously, this type of communication is easily stretched to the breaking point, especially when discussing deep, important topics. However, it does encourage people to just throw something out there rather than cower and lurk. It limits risk while creating a parameter that people can easily comprehend. Say something in 140 chars or less. I can do that; you can do that, evidently even cats and dogs can do that. Simple.

It’s what good teachers do in order to get you to think: provide you with an endpoint. Speaking as a designer and a writer, I understand that knowing where the box ends allows you to think outside it. Constraints = creativity.

So, let’s not turn Twitter into something it’s not, but rather, as you say, let’s appreciate it as the building block it is. Entire industries may and have spring up around it. But let’s keep the original around without modification so that the small-voiced may continue to speak.

@carlacasilli

By: Jon Garfunkel

Jon Garfunkel — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:33:52 +0000

JZ,

Last time I checked, the Twitter API does not limit to 140 characters, but the different Twitter apps behave differently when you break the limit.

But busting past the limit is only the tip of the iceberg for what should be done with status/messaging communications:
see: http://civilities.net/Semantic_Social_Media_Construction

Jon