Twitter's New Format

The growing popularity of Twitter came from it's unique platform of expressing thoughts in only a few characters. This was appealing to viewers because it wasn't lengthy and overwhelming amounts of information like a Facebook newsfeed, and it allowed people to easily share and talk about things in an informal manner. Recently, Twitter just announced that they will be testing a new idea of adding the amount of characters from 140-280. Twitter conducted research and found that people in the United States use almost double the amount of characters as other languages, and want people to be able to say what they feel without feeling like they have to cram their thoughts. Although, this idea raises concern that people will stay away from Twitter due to their initial reason for joining, which was the simple tweet format of 140 characters.

 

I do think that Twitter should be very strategic in the way that they grow their site. They have already added advertisements, which have strayed me from using because the have increased in number on my timeline in just the last year. I don't think 140 to 280 characters will make a large enough impact to make a significant amount of users to leave Twitter, but I definitely think Twitter should carefully assess what the are adding. If they keep adding content, I feel like Twitter will lose it's uniqueness and core values of simplicity, making it comparable to sites like Facebook and Instagram.




Sources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2017/09/26/twitter-tests-lengthening-the-140-character-tweet/#68bdbbe05c45