A lot of social media platforms have come and gone. Many people still cry out for some of their old favorites, whether it was a micro-blogging platform, a podcast platform, or a way to share images and video. The list goes on and on, but one thing is certain, all of these platforms started with a vision of what they wanted to be. It’s no different from the social platforms we have today, just that they’ve risen to the top for their respective offerings. Facebook is a great platform for connecting with friends and family, and following businesses. Twitter is a great platform for sharing quick information, catching the news, and following celebrities and brands. YouTube has video, Instagram has photos and video, and so on.
But what happens when these once disruptive channels start to lose their momentum, and suddenly try to make shifts away from what made them unique?
This is what is happening to Twitter, and in our opinion, it’s not necessarily for the best.
Let’s start with what made Twitter so compelling. The need for brevity in only 140 characters forced us to make sure we could get what we wanted to as quickly as possible. Including your Twitter handle gave you even fewer characters to work with. Including hashtags meant you had even less, yet everyone from pre-teens, to celebrities, and company CEO’s made it work.
Twitter is great for quick updates, you can read while standing in line, on the bus or train, as a passenger in the car, you name it. You can laugh, retweet, or even get angry and start a Twitter fight, all in only 140 characters. Now they want to expand that limitation, but not just a little, think A LOT. The expansion comes to the grand number of 10,000 characters. That’s not joke.
Now imagine reading a text wall of 10,000 characters, heck even half that, and all of a sudden Twitter doesn’t seem like the thing to open in those times between moments in your life. Twitter is not Facebook, it’s not a full blog, it’s not an e-book, and it shouldn’t try to be any of those things. Keep it short, sweet, and simple. Twitter users prefer it that way.
While there are some benefits for brands to have this much space to share content, we wonder just how many people will actually consume content this long.
Read our article about 4 Ways To Increase Twitter Engagement
