The Twitter 280 Character Count Is A Flat Out Travesty

I’ll be honest with you, I’m rattled. I am flat out shook by this whole 280 character thing that I had to blog about it.

So yesterday I hop onto Twitter and notice that more people are tweeting their faces off and are writing novels. First thought, “Did Twitter give the 280 character extension to more people to try?”. Next thing I know, I’m writing out a tweet. I’m devising in my brain how I am going express something in my small window of 140 characters.

I start typing away and suddenly, I see this little circle where the number used to be that told you how many characters you have left.

My dummy brain just thought that was the number trying to load and the app was struggling for whatever reason. I thought that was a fair guess.

Then I get home from work and I realize that my world has been flipped upside down. We now have the power to essentially type a full blog. And let me tell you, it really is a catastrophe that Twitter’s allowed this to happen.

Now I’ll tell the truth here, I’ve benefited slightly from this extended character limit. Mostly on the Couch Guy twitter account, but regardless it’s helped a little bit. But the fact that they DOUBLED the amount you can tweet is mind boggling.

That was the beauty of Twitter. You had a small space to type and that was it. In a world where our attention spans are now equivalent to a 1970s squirrel, we can’t be spending our times reading 280 characters. I just don’t have that kind of time. Day light savings time is OVER. By the time I’m finished reading your dumb tweet with some song lyrics or something I generally could have lived without knowing, the suns down.

Speaking of what a time to do this to us. We JUST lost daylight. People are depressed. People are cold. And now we have to read 280 characters in a tweet? Did we not think about timing here, Twitter?

Also, to the people who are making your tweet obnoxiously long to the point where I have to swipe my thumb up the screen 2-3 times, you’re possibly some of the worst people on the planet. And I’m talking about the WORST. I see that and I get mad. I even saw the Patriots account do that yesterday joking about how they can type out all of Tom Brady’s wins now. (Which just isn’t true)

Finally! Enough characters to count all of Tom’s wins.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
Hey @Twitter, can we get some more characters?

— New England Patriots (@Patriots) November 8, 2017

Listen, I love Tom Brady as much as the next guy. But this isn’t funny. This isn’t clever. This made me want run through a brick wall. And not because I’m jacked up. But because I’m annoyed.

Twitter if you wanted to improve, give me an edit button. But only allow one edited word on a tweet and you should only get one per day. You don’t want people being able to edit entire tweets so they can look better. That’s science. I’m no scientist… But that’s science.

Give me back my numbered character count, and bring me back to 140. When I see someone’s tweet now that looks to be 200+, I’m out and skip right over it.

Twitter’s my favorite app bar none. But I’m rattled and I need this anarchy corrected.

Written By: Nick Quaglia (@NickQuag)