Recently I saw a retweet on Twitter about “5 ways to Tweet more than 140 characters” and it occurred to me that the author (and retweeter as well) seem to be missing the fundamental concept of Twitter.
Dom Sagolla recounts that 140 characters was settled on because it was shorter than the 160 character limit for phone text messages, and shorter was better in order to keep SMS costs down with early versions of Twitter.140 characters was settled on because it was shorter than the 160 character limit for phone text messages, and shorter was better in order to keep SMS costs down with early versions of Twitter.
We don’t worry about SMS costs any longer because Twitter is web-based. However, the 140 character limit still stands, and I think it should be adhered to for a few reasons:
1. Twitter is not your blog. By all means, use your blog to flesh out your thoughts on anything you’d like – much like I’m doing here. But send people to your blog with a short headline and a link, don’t try to cram an extended thought into 140 characters. Also realize that engaging with your followers on twitter means limiting your conversation with readers to 140 characters at a time, which also doesn’t allow for much thoughtful discussion. Ask people to comment on your blog and try to keep the discussion there.
2. Twitter is not your Facebook page. Facebook is a great place to post pictures of your recent product launch party, or show a video of your office walkthrough. Twitter is a great place to write a short message with a bit.ly link directing people to that post. (Added bonus of signing up for a bit.ly account – you can track statistics of click-throughs as a way to see where people are arriving from and what days they clicked the link.)
3. Twitter is also not instant messaging. I have seen people have lengthy conversations on Twitter, and while a bit of back-and-forth is good engagement, all parties need to have a sense of when it’s time to move the discussion to e-mail or IM to continue the conversation.
4. There is much to be gained by being brief. But not by trimming letters from every word in your post. If you need extra space, take a hint from above and post to your Facebook page or your blog, but don’t redirect me to the last 15 characters of a 155-character tweet – it’s annoying and wastes people’s time. Use your writing skills to edit, censor, rewrite and cut your words down to the 140 character limit. It’s liberating, really.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery said it best: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
