Twitter is grasping at straws with their newest move to double the character limit on tweets from 140 to 280. Their stock has fallen an astounding 70 percent since its peak in 2013, according to Forbes, and amid some recent bad publicity from users, this could well be a gamble that decides the company’s fate.
The change has already proven to be polarizing, suggesting the bad publicity is not going away, and for good reason. Twitter has been under scrutiny for the content they allow to appear, questionable advertising practices and their lack of transparency. Users have complained about the site allowing harassment and threats. Congress is now opening dialogue with them and other tech companies about Russian bots’ role in the election.
When Twitter’s popularity was soaring, many thought they could be the next rival to Facebook. But as of January 2017, they rank ninth in terms of active users, according to Statista. Advertisers may prefer to spend their dollars with Instagram or Tumblr, who both nearly double Twitter in users. Slow growth and bad press are two things sure to make investors skeptical of any company.
Financial implications aside, Twitter is worsening the product. The beauty of Twitter was in the transient nature of the content. The short, rapid bursts of information, entertainment and self-loathing was the perfect format for short attention spans. Users could jump in and out without committing too much time to each tweet, while still being immersed in hundreds of sources of content. A witty, insightful or relatable tweet seemed all that much more impressive if it could be done in 140 characters or less. Facebook is the place for flailing, incoherent rants or long, important messages. Twitter is for short, clever quips. Anything of value on Twitter should be able to be said in 140 or less. Now even good tweets, if they are near 280 characters, may not be worth reading in their entirety. The bad tweets, obviously, will now be even less intelligible, less grammatically sound and more obnoxious. Two-hundred-eighty characters in all caps is not easy on the scrolling eye.
Perhaps the most glaring negative consequence is the frightening reality that the president’s tweets now have the ability to contain twice as much idiocy as they previously did. This alone should have been more than enough of a disincentive for the character limit increase.
Twitter is moving on instinct here. They could be at risk of being swallowed up by another company or worse, continue to fall behind other social media sites. So, they suddenly decide to fix one of the oldest, yet misguided gripes from users.
Twitter users may want to Tweet out 280 characters, but they do not want to read 280 characters from everyobody else. Maybe this proves that we are all just talking to ourselves online anyway.
