Yesterday, the micro-blogging platform otherwise known as Twitter, officially rolled out its new 280 character tweeting limit. For over a decade the platform has been notoriously known for its 140 character limit. Call it a signature asset. Well, at least it was for the past 10 years!
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The original announcement regarding the rollout of 280 character tweets was made back on September 26, 2017. Cramming your thought into 140 characters has been a dilemma for the micro-blogging platform. Yet, for the past decade it has managed to retain its signature asset. Until now. The move towards 280 characters was largely in part due to the aftermath of many complaints and headaches as reported by other Twitter users. Not only that but also due to extensive evaluations and usage analysis as performed by Twitter.[br]
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According to Twitter’s analysis, “Most tweets in Japanese have 15 characters.” while “Most tweets in English have 34 characters.” So, that translates to 9% of all tweets in English hitting the 140 character limit while 0.4% of tweets in Japanese hitting the 140 character limit.[br]
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Why the 280 character increase in that case?[br]
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We are guessing that some of the data as indicated in the image above from Twitter was sufficient enough to make some executive decisions. Who knows.
Is #280Characters Enough or Too Much?
There has been lots of controversy around the increase in character limitations for tweets. Many users have expressed strong concern around the fact that an increase in character usage will create unnecessary clutter across the platform. Therefore essentially making Twitter less engaging and less useful. Crimson Hexagon, a private company performed an analysis across 2.7 million tweets from Sep. 25, 2017 through Nov. 6, 2017. It was able to find that negative sentiment was far more common than positive (63% vs. 37%). Therefore potentially indicating that an increase in character usage could eventually spark further negativity on Twitter.[br]
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What is our take on the #280Character intro?[br]
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Well, like anything else there are pros and cons to every situation. The fact that Twitter is doubling its character limitations on tweets will pose many new opportunities in communication. On the downside though it will attribute to development of more negativity in communication. Especially with trolls who still to this day seem to be lingering around the platform.[br]
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Time will only tell of the true value behind 280 characters. How are YOU using Twitter’s new 280 characters?
