Paul GrahamVerified account

I’ve always assumed someone dig up a stat: hey everyone if we increase the character count to X, we can eliminate 80% of tweetstorms

I've always contended that the texting aspect of twttr was a big selling point around the world, and that necessitated the character limit. Hell, I remember when the iPhone was 1st avail & folks at SXSW were enjoying terrible data... text was the only way to tweet!

I wonder if part of it is that it was part of the company's identity. It started as SMS restrictions, but quickly became what they identified as. Culture change is harder than character count change :-)

I don’t think Twitter IR would like that coming out.

Victims of early success? Lottery winners think they have a reliable way to pick lucky numbers.

It's reminiscent of Intel in the early 1970s: they through ICs should have no more than 16 pins, a severe and arbitrary restriction. When they were forced to 18 pins to support larger RAMs, people looked as if someone had died. These limits harmed the 4004 and 8008 processors.

And why didn’t they just roll it out in a couple of geographies Facebook style and test what happens?

Subquestion: should there have been a 140 limit to start w? I'd say it played a huge role in what Twitter became & in what users b/c adept at doing - plus, it spawned the concept of hashtags. So, while the move to 280 worked, that doesn't mean 140 was wrong to begin w, or later.

May be it's a bit like the incredulous reaction I get from my peers after they realised when they borrow my PC that I retrained myself from typing QWERTY to Colemak.