Twitter Questions

[panerd]

I admit I am not very trendy. I was against the cell phone, the mp3 player, the laptop, you name it and obviously I now use all of these things. But I have a question about Twitter. Even though it holds no interest to me personally I could see somebody wanting to follow what Brad Pitt is doing or a politician giving them updates from the house floor, I could even see me following a buddy on there who lives across the country “I played Super Tecmo last night as the Colts and won the Super Bowl” But why is it limited to a small amount of characters? Why is it any different than myspace or facebook or a blog? And most importantly why would anyone ever follow the local weatherman or espn.com or cnn? I assume you have to go on the interent to get twitter, so why not just visit those pages? Are we really getting this lazy as a society?

[MikeVic]

I would guess the character limit is due to cell phone text messaging. I believe you can get the updates sent to your phone... so you wouldn't want an essay split up in 1000 text messages.

[MJ4H]

To keep it from turning into a blog. Those already exist. It is to encourage conciseness, which is what makes it effective. Concise updates from lots of people, instead of indulgent wanna-be authorship from a few people.

[Autumn]

Yes, the limit is meant to distinguish it from a blog, I think. There's a veyr different feel to these kind of status updates, and it means you can browse through them quickly and get a feel for what's going on among your friends/connections.

As for why you would connect to various people, it just depends what you like. There's one account I connect to that posts about interesting things happening in the nearby city and tends to find the sort of things I'm interested in. so that's handy. I would never bother looking up her blog or Web page but I've learned about some good things through it.

[panerd]

I was unaware they were sent to your phone. Again something I am not interested in but I guess I could see someone with an unlimited texting plan not miding continual updates from the local weather guy. Makes more sense, still seems lazy though.

[PackerFanatic]

My understanding was the text messaging thing that MikeVic mentioned. You are able to update you Twitter right from your phone by sending a text, as well as getting updates to your phone if you want, and 140 is the limit on a text message.

[WheelsVT]

And it has interesting results when government representatives don't think before posting. Saw this on a friend's "tweet" this morning:

Freakin hilarious: http://is.gd/14SHi backstory here: http://is.gd/14SHh

[Fidatelo]

I hate the limit. I'm always struggling to find a way to write what I want within the limit. I think a limit of 500 would have been more appropriate, you'd still be limited to small thoughts and not blogs, but you could express yourself in a more unique way.

Also, I think my cellphone can send 1000 characters in a text?

[panerd]

And it has interesting results when government representatives don't think before posting. Saw this on a friend's "tweet" this morning:

Freakin hilarious: http://is.gd/14SHi backstory here: http://is.gd/14SHh

See that seems to be another angle that people just don't understand. I am not trendy so I don't go to trendy clubs. Some of these politicians need to stay away from stuff like twitter it does way more harm than good.

[Raiders Army]

I hate the limit. I'm always struggling to find a way to write what I want within the limit. I think a limit of 500 would have been more appropriate, you'd still be limited to small thoughts and not blogs, but you could express yourself in a more unique way.

Also, I think my cellphone can send 1000 characters in a text?

I like the limit. As stated above, people need to stop rambling and say what they're going to say. I don't like people who tweet four or five times to get a thought across.

Then again, limiting the number of characters is not necessarily good for the person who can't express themselves concisely (no offense). Most tweets become inconsequential or uninteresting as a result.

[Cringer]

Twitter has actually got me into more sites, helped me discover more places to go on the web. I follow the Dynamo players and a couple Packers, but most of who I follow are guys who are not like that. A couple guys do blogs on US soccer which I didn't know about until I started following them on Twitter. Why not only follow their blog now? Because what is on their blog is different, it's an op-ed piece. On Twitter they are posting things as they happen in games, or post about stuff not even related to their blog, you interact with them in a different way.

Plus I find it a nice way to get updates about things all in one place. Press Gazette has a couple new stories about the Packers up, this guy's blog has a new post, this youth coach in Canada raises alpacas, Dynamo front office guy mentioned something about a new stadium, this irregular podcast has a new posting. Then all these same people may re-tweet someone else's post I never would have seen, and that leads me somewhere I never would have been. It's very useful to me, the way I use it to suit what I want out of it.

[Fidatelo]

I like the limit. As stated above, people need to stop rambling and say what they're going to say. I don't like people who tweet four or five times to get a thought across.

Then again, limiting the number of characters is not necessarily good for the person who can't express themselves concisely (no offense). Most tweets become inconsequential or uninteresting as a result.

No offense taken, I am verbose, it's who I am. I like to phrase things in specific ways, ways which I believe add humor or make things more interesting, and Twitter just craps all over that. I'd say about half my tweets are never twat because I can't find a way I would like to form them.

[Oilers9911]

It's not really to stop the yammering. It's because 140 characters is the character limit of text messages. Lack of rambling is just a fortunate side benefit.

[JeeberD]

Also, I think my cellphone can send 1000 characters in a text?

And I'm limited to 160 characters.