Twitter Testing Expanded 280 Character Limit for Tweets

[C DM]

After all these years I still can't understand why people use Twitter. It's like a tropical forest with zillion birds chirping away worthless one liners all at the same time.

Just like there are people who don't get why people text message when they can just call (or vice versa).

 

[John.B]

How is it even possible that the people at Twitter don’t get Twitter?

 

[adamjackson]

I'm curious how this changes for those of us who still receive tweets via SMS. Will I receive a tweet in two messages or will it be truncated? I know Twitter doesn't care about us but I am curious.

 

[Compote]

Double covfefe.
[doublepost=1506478300][/doublepost]

I'm curious how this changes for those of us who still receive tweets via SMS. Will I receive a tweet in two messages or will it be truncated? I know Twitter doesn't care about us but I am curious.

When did anyone ever recieve tweets via SMS ? :|

 

[macs4nw]

At this point I really struggle to see a point to Twitter at all. It seems to be mainly a platform for drive by attacks on people, marketing/corporate plugs, and quick referrals to more content over on Instagram.

Twitter, a sounding board for all sort of disgruntled folk and/or the home of anonymous snipers, so it seems. The negative tweets seem to far outweigh the positive ones. Here's hoping we can collectively outgrow this.

 

[ipedro]

When did anyone ever recieve tweets via SMS ? :|

Huh? Since the very beginning. Twitter was built for SMS.

 

[Solomani]

At this point I really struggle to see a point to Twitter at all. It seems to be mainly a platform for drive by attacks on people, marketing/corporate plugs, and quick referrals to more content over on Instagram.

Oh shush you. Twitter is the platform that allows Supreme Leader to govern the American Nation.

 

[EdT]

Am I the only one that wants this? Reading all the comments online in the last few minutes everyone is so pissed. Why? I've wanted this for years! It's not going to change your life - like I dunno, a slower iPhone that has less battery life if you needed it in an emergency? No you just say oh it's indexing it's ok, I still love Apple. Oh no.. tweets, that's something to get pissed about.. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Speaking only for me, 140 characters forced me to think what was important and what wasn't. Read some of my posts here and they tend to be long. Limits save people like you from posts like mine.

 

[adamjackson]

Double covfefe.
[doublepost=1506478300][/doublepost]
When did anyone ever recieve tweets via SMS ? :|

Did you ever wonder why the limit was 140 characters?

Messages are sent with the MAP MO- and MT-ForwardSM operations, whose payload length is limited by the constraints of the signaling protocol to precisely 140 octets (140 octets = 140 * 8 bits = 1120 bits).

Depending on which alphabet the subscriber has configured in the handset, this leads to the maximum individual short message sizes of 160 7-bit characters, 140 8-bit characters, or 70 16-bit characters.
​

I haven't received any 280 character tweets yet but I am curious to see how this new system works. The great thing about SMS is that it's light, free, ad-free, no trackers and I don't have to join Twitter. I text:

"FOLLOW REALDONALDTRUMP" to 40404 and I just get all of his tweets w/o having to actually join twitter as a user. I can type MUTE or UNFOLLOW or BLOCK to opt out and I get things just as fast as web users get the tweets. Without any crap like photos, videos, advertisements or spam. Twitter also doesn't have any analytics to what tweets I view or what I click on.

https://support.twitter.com/articles/14020

 

[imronburgundy]

In related news, Trump's maximum count has been reduced to 1.

People have been asking for world peace for centuries. I think this is the ultimate answer...