You may have seen this week that Twitter is contemplating increasing it’s character limit from 140 to 10,000! This is the latest in a string of changes, ranging from allowing anyone to direct message you, to Twitter polls. Whilst the plan is still to show 140 characters in the feed, users will have to option to “read more”. I won’t talk you through the minutiae. You can read more about that here. Instead, I want to make a case for both sides. I did some research on Twitter, using #Twitter10k. Most tweets appeared to be opposed, however some users were in favour.
Reasons to accept the proposed 10,000 character limit
- Content creation- Companies could harness the extra characters to use Twitter as a new medium of content creation and get more of their thoughts across.
- Customer service- Twitter can now be used for in depth customer service issues that were previously difficult to conduct.
- More valuable for business- More characters will mean more data and the ability to gain a deeper insight into an audience
Reasons to stick with the current 140 character limit
- Drop in share value- When the news broke the Twitter were contemplating increasing the character limit, the value of their shares dropped 2%.
- Main USP- The brevity of Twitter is a good thing for most, as well as offering something different from other social media platforms.
- What’s the point?- Businesses should be using Twitter to provide a snapshot of info along with a link back to their website. Twitter is a very transient medium, do you really want your carefully crafted article to disappear into the ether.
My opinion? Well, with my work head on, I can see some good aspects to the idea. If users had the option of reading past the 140 character limit and read a longer message, what’s the problem? However, your platform for a longer message is your website (if it isn’t it, it should be!). Twitter bosses want to arrest the slide on active users but there are better ways to do this than selling their soul.