Tweets twice as long [Twitter updates]

[Moliere]

Yay?

Twitter plans to increase the number of characters in tweets from 140 to 280 for the majority of users.

[tjg_marantz]

Not yay at all.

[Biyobi]

Now Herr Drumpf can fit both feet in his mouth (or like 6 of his tiny hands).

[Blackhawk]

What difference does it make? People use Twitter one of two ways:

1. Squeezing their information into too few characters, resulting in confusing or incomplete information

or

2. Posting a paragraph that gets spread across 15 tweets in a confusing way

Why such a poor way of communicating became the go-to is beyond me.

[Moliere]

What difference does it make? People use Twitter one of two ways:

1. Squeezing their information into too few characters, resulting in confusing or incomplete information

or

2. Posting a paragraph that gets spread across 15 tweets in a confusing way

Why such a poor way of communicating became the go-to is beyond me.

[Max Peck]

What difference does it make? People use Twitter one of two ways:

1. Squeezing their information into too few characters, resulting in confusing or incomplete information

or

2. Posting a paragraph that gets spread across 15 tweets in a confusing way

Why such a poor way of communicating became the go-to is beyond me.

Because texting. Twitter was just a way to broadcast SMS messages to the world.

[Sudy]

Majority of users? So like, folks will be chosen at random, or they're vetting the entire userbase for worthiness?

Anyway, yeah, Twitter is horseshit. I just don't understand. I'm not even that old. What a silly, silly platform. Truly no idea how it ever got so big or mainstream. I get the minimalism factor... it's like a blog, one message at a time. But this is also what limits it. I haven't bothered to learn how to read a conversation to this day. I have two accounts but quickly abandoned them both. Mrs. Nym is very active and has made many friends there. But how do you maintain a relationship in such a disconnected environment? A BB/forum works so much better for that. Or even Facebook, as horrible as it's become and mostly always was.

I'm just not interested enough in what anyone has to say, one 140-character message at a time. Or if I am, I want to connect without Twitter's limitations. I guess I could see using it if I had "fans". But I can't see following even the few celebrities/public figures I am obsessed with.

Perhaps it has an extremely narrow usefulness for publicizing news and alerts. But we all know how well that's gone recently.

In the words of the no-longer-cool internet, "what is this i don't even". (Yes I'm aware both Twitter and that meme are ten years old. It's a known fact the internet ceased to be cool circa 2001.)

[coopasonic]

What difference does it make? People use Twitter one of two ways:

1. Squeezing their information into too few characters, resulting in confusing or incomplete information

or

2. Posting a paragraph that gets spread across 15 tweets in a confusing way

Why such a poor way of communicating became the go-to is beyond me.

You forgot one:

3. Posting a picture of a paragraph of text.

[Isgrimnur]

That one’s always good.

[Rumpy]

Twitter is the only social network that my Dad is on. He's not on Facebook. It took some convincing from my sister, but he eventually signed up and created his own unique thing. As an amateur astronomer, he's always loved pointing stuff out in the night sky, so that's what he does on Twitter. On any given day, he's pointing things out in the sky that are of particular interest, and he's garnered a pretty good following. He'll be glad to hear of the increased character limit, as that's always been a challenge.

[Daehawk]

Bout time. Im always about 3 words too long on tweets and have to redo.

[YellowKing]

Twitter's not great for personal accounts, but it's excellent for business accounts. Case in point - my podcast Facebook page has about 60 followers. My podcast Twitter account has almost 1500 followers.

That ease of publicity is a double-edged sword. The very same strengths that have made Twitter such a great promotion tool have turned a lot of non-business people to other platforms like Instragram.

[Holman]

I use Twitter almost exclusively to follow journalists and pundits. They're always talking at each other, and this creates an environment where the breaking news and developments show up on Twitter first.

It's not all that hard to figure out who's sane (left and right) and prune the propagandists, so pretty soon you a steady and diverse news feed. Since tweets are personal rather than corporate, you develop a sense of who's good at what.

Throw in a few comedians and writers and it also stays entertaining.

(None of this relates directly to the 280 expansion, I know...)

[Paingod]

That actually sounds like a neat way to stay abreast of things and have it delivered to your doorstep instead of hunting for it.

I generally try and avoid letting my phone intrude on my life, though, and don't mind hunting for my news and/or being a few hours behind on the latest events.

[Jeff V]

Why such a poor way of communicating became the go-to is beyond me.

Yeah, still no interest here. Twitter has the ability to make everyone seem as dumb and illiterate as the POTUS and I really want no part of it.

[Kraken]

I opened a twitter account for my business back in the day, but I could never figure out how to use it for advertising and never had any personal interest in it. I think the account still exists, and my facebook business page probably still autoposts to it sometimes, but I'd be shocked if it has any followers. I don't even remember what the login was.

[Moliere]

"When we started distributing special status tokens that signify which people are important enough to join an elite group, we never could have imagined we might be creating some problems down the line."

[stessier]

So Twitter changed a bunch today. There is no longer a way to copy a link to a tweet. If you click "embed tweet", you get this, which renders as the stuff in the spoiler tag. The tweet is in there, but it's not very easy to pull out. Anyone have a work around?

Code: Select all

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">&quot;At some point, they&#39;re gonna put me in a home, I&#39;m sure.&quot;<br>I&#39;m pretty bad at interpreting dreams, but I had to post this just for the Mabel cameo alone. She appears 37 seconds in, gets bored immediately &amp; bails on me for a nap &amp; some <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TweetDreams?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TweetDreams</a> of her own. 🐶💤🤣<a href="https://twitter.com/latelateshow?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@latelateshow</a> <a href="https://t.co/VJ7WTSeyNf">https://t.co/VJ7WTSeyNf</a></p>&mdash; Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) <a href="https://twitter.com/HamillHimself/status/1151204450251366400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 16, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Spoiler:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">&quot;At some point, they&#39;re gonna put me in a home, I&#39;m sure.&quot;<br>I&#39;m pretty bad at interpreting dreams, but I had to post this just for the Mabel cameo alone. She appears 37 seconds in, gets bored immediately &amp; bails on me for a nap &amp; some <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TweetDreams ... tDreams</a> of her own. <a href="https://twitter.com/latelateshow?ref_sr ... ateshow</a> <a href="https://t.co/VJ7WTSeyNf">https://t.co/V ... </p>&mdash; Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) <a href=" 16, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

[Isgrimnur]

Right-click on the date/time stamp, copy link address.

[stessier]

Ah, thank you.

[Isgrimnur]

Glad to help.