Part of Twitter’s appeal is how easy it is to digest. News is broken down into bite-size pieces, jokes get to the point, and there are only so many misguided racist thoughts that can be crammed into 140 short characters. Well, it looks like that’s all about to change. According to Re/Code, the latest Twitter change will be the removal of the standard character limit, giving the tweeter longform capabilities.
Following the unlimited length of private messages and the new retweeting with comment function, Twitter is a constantly evolving beast. Co-founder Jack Dorsey is serving as interim CEO at this time, and his continued involvement is part of the driving force behind Twitter’s changing mediums.
“People have been very precious at Twitter about what Twitter can be and how much it can be evolved,” said one current senior employee. “Having Jack come in and say it’s okay makes all the difference in the world.”
Part of the impetus for this change is competition with other sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, where users can share longer, more in-depth posts. However, something will probably be lost with these new changes. Do we really want the overly long rants that infiltrate Facebook to be all over Twitter, too? Obviously, companies need to evolve to survive, but this seems like it could backfire in a big way.