So what’s happening?
The new year has come with big revelations from Twitter. On the 5th of January original founder and CEO Jack Dorsey revealed the social media giants are considering allowing up to 10,000 character tweets in the future. Rather than 140.
Since the announcement #Twitter10k has been trending worldwide with people considering what this would mean for Twitter going forward.
What will it look like?
It does seem that the look and feel of Twitter shouldn’t change greatly. Only the first 140 characters would be visible. With a call to action available to expand and allow users to read the rest of the content. The rationale is to keep users within Twitter for as long as possible. Due to the current functionality, most users link to external content to provide more information pushing people away from the app. The character expansion should reduce this.
What does it all mean?
This move away from the core values of what Twitter stands for is scary for many users. Some quoting the reason for leaving other social media platforms was there was too much content and they were drawn to the character restrictions.
The 140 character limit is a defining feature of Twitter. More importantly what makes it different to all other social media platforms. There is a great fear that the popular platform is going to become the land of long ramblings of individuals and worst brands.
What do we think?
Sarah, Client lead and social media specialist:
"Let's be honest, if a brand we followed posted a 10,000 post, would we click past the first 140 characters to read it? Probably not. Also, there are questions on how Twitter will manage and monitor spam messages with this increase in characters.
Is this a little desperate? It has been well documented that Twitter hasn't performed as well as hoped since it floated on the stock market in 2013. It would appear original founder and CEO Jack Dorsey is trying to keep investors happy to the detriment of his loyal users that already love the platform."
So far, best practice when it comes to communication on social is to stay true to the medium you are communicating on. For Twitter, that has been about sticking to its short, snappy posts and keeping content concise. We'll certainly be watching this space to see how this move will affect how we use it to communicate with customers.
