Twitter Expanding to 10k Characters Good or Bad?

Many woke up this morning to the news that Twitter’s stock has fallen to an all-time low due to rumors of future changes that will enable users to post tweets of up to 10,000 characters long (#tweetlength). For the second day in a row, Wall Street has displayed an almost instant knee jerk reaction to this speculation.

Yesterday, Fitbit announced their new fitness smart watch called Blaze to an excited audience at CES only to see their share price to drop by 18% despite booming sales over the holiday season of over 30 million.

The 10,000-character Twitter post story (#tweetlength) first appeared on Re/code with instant opinion divides as online communities, forums and even Twitter itself fiercely debated the rumored changes. Tech blogs such as Gizmodo quickly tried to restore order by asking everyone to calm down and not believe everything they read on the Internet.

However, rather than confirming or denying the reports, Twitter Co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey teasingly advised that they had seen more people sharing screenshot images of text as a way to circumvent the limit. In fact he delivered his lengthy twitter message in the form of an image screenshot to make his point.

Twitter’s passionate user base that is infamously fearless about expressing its opinion within the 140-character limit, was quick to express its disdain and warned of an apocalyptic future full of spam where Twitter would lose its identity to become just another public blogging platform. However, if the mob actually put down their pitchforks and torches for a few moments, would a 10,000-character tweet limit really actually be such a bad thing?

If Twitter were to restrict every Tweet to a succinct and beautiful 140-character “visible constraint” and simply feature a ‘More’ button or link below the 140-character tweet that would enable users to click on the button or link to read the rest of the Tweet, I think this could be just what the platform needs. If the digital landscape has taught us anything, it's the importance of continuously changing and evolving one’s platform even if the change were to materially affect the platform’s core principles. Every platform has to adjust from time to time based on evolving trends and changing user behavior.

Opposition to the 10,000-character Tweet concept is primarily due to Twitter’s unique appeal where users craft a perfect 140-character message in a vein similar to how we used to create music-mix tapes back in the 80’s. A button or link feature that merely states “read more” would enable this to continue while also giving its users a greater ability to express themselves in long form should they so desire.

Critics speculate if recent looming changes are all part of an expanded master plan that is trying to compete with Facebook, resulting in the platform sacrificing its identity to become just another clone. Recent features such as “moments” and “While you were away” were greeted with a degree of skepticism.

To me at least it appears that a group of Twitter users will go hysterical each time there is a change that Twitter recommends regardless of evaluating the benefits of the change itself.

Twitter does have a growth issue and shedding users gradually but consistently along with a falling stock price does warrant changes with the platform to say the least. In fact, I am not entirely convinced that a change limited to just a tweak in character limits will be enough. It may actually be time to revamp Twitter’s entire user experience.

While there are some users that enjoy the somewhat pretentious form of self-expression via the medium of artistic minimalism in a 140-character tweet, it is clear however that Twitter as a business needs to evolve considering it has not made a profit since its launch in 2006. Maybe creating that extra space in a Tweet could prove appealing for advertisers and sponsors to sell their products.

The future of Twitter continues to look uncertain, but a willingness to be nimble, stay with the pulse of the market and evolve with changing user behavior should only be seen as a positive thing rather than a negative one.

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