Twitter is staying with 140 characters

Twitter co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey, announced on the Today Show last Friday that Twitter’s 140-character limit is here to stay. (See video below)

It’s staying. It’s a good constraint for us. It allows for of-the-moment brevity.

With Wall Street clamoring for a higher stock price and the public thinking Twitter is trying to keep up with Facebook in the amount of users, rumors have run rampant that Twitter was going to increase its character limit. This way Twitter could supposedly compete with Medium, a third party blogging platform, and Facebook.

Dorsey,  who returned as CEO last Ocrober is comitted to making Twitter better. However getting away from the 140 character limit would have been a mistake.

Twitter is not long form social media ala Facebook or a blog-like platform such as Medium. Twitter is about ‘tweets.’ Short form sharing, responses and engagement.

140 characters work. The Chinese earthquake. The US Airways plane landing on the Hudson. The Thanksgiving Eve Mumbai guerilla attacks. The ISIS Paris attack. Sporting events and Hollywood stars. All news spread around the world in seconds via Twitter.

Sharing news stories we read with an attribute to the source. Unmatched social sharing and engagement.

Other changes may be coming, but I’m with Dorsey, Twitter works because of its brevity.