The origins of the 140 character limit are interesting; it was originally put in place because Twitter was SMS-based, and SMS limits the number of characters to 160. 140 allowed some wiggle room.
But retaining the character limit changes the platform entirely. "Lifting the twitter limit" does not a publishing platform make; it changes everything that Twitter is.
I think Jack explained the psychological reasons very well [1]: Imagine you're standing in front of a blank wall, and instructed to paint the entire thing. You hold yourself in a very specific way. You spend a lot of time and effort thinking about how you should do it. You compose your actions in such a way to fill the entire wall.
Now compare that to being given a post-it note. Not only is it less intimidating and more disposable, but it doesn't take as much mental effort to get to a point where your work becomes valuable.
That's why I tweet incessantly, but I rarely blog. To blog I feel like I have to have some continuation of several thoughts that are strung together in a logical way, and all flow to some larger conclusion. Tweeting is a single thought or impression that is off the cuff. It almost flows naturally out of me.
I even find that when I want to write a blog post, it flows the best when I just start out tweeting. Before I know it it becomes a tweet storm, but breaking the work up into very small, bite-sized chunks makes the entire process manageable.
That being said, it makes sense for there to be some way to easily consume a tweet storm other than someone tweeting 1/ 2/ 3/ 4/. But I don't think that solution is saying, "Alright, go nuts, tweets can be as long as you want them to." My hunch is Twitter would lose an order of magnitude more value than it would gain by doing so.
It's not literally every thought; ideally it's only the best/most interesting ones.
I rather enjoy seeing what's on the mind of the smartest people in the world (and even moreso what they're reading), and that's what I try to structure my Twitter feed for.
I try to tweet things that are at least somewhat insightful, but maybe I really suck at it. The great thing about Twitter is that if people don't think I'm interesting they can unfollow me. I really love that. Being on Twitter is like being in a room with whomever you would like to at any given time.
Well its usually unappealing, doesn't mean always. Look at it this way - would you tell the world to stop writing so many books unless they knew the book they were writing was a bonafide masterpiece?
I never understood 'tweet storms', especially since the feed is in reverse chronological order, possibly interspersed with tweets from other sources. No easy way to read it in order.
I get what you're saying, but lifting the character limit doesn't in any way mean you need to write longer tweets. You could still just write off the cuff thoughts when you have them, as the platform currently allows for.
Of course, but I think the psychological benefits to the imposed scarcity are enormous.
I think there are ways to allow tweetstorms without lifting the limit, and I love the concept of things like oneshot that allow you to reference something without making it part of your tweet, but still imposing the limit. My guess would be Twitter builds in some features like that.
But retaining the character limit changes the platform entirely. "Lifting the twitter limit" does not a publishing platform make; it changes everything that Twitter is.
I think Jack explained the psychological reasons very well [1]: Imagine you're standing in front of a blank wall, and instructed to paint the entire thing. You hold yourself in a very specific way. You spend a lot of time and effort thinking about how you should do it. You compose your actions in such a way to fill the entire wall.
Now compare that to being given a post-it note. Not only is it less intimidating and more disposable, but it doesn't take as much mental effort to get to a point where your work becomes valuable.
That's why I tweet incessantly, but I rarely blog. To blog I feel like I have to have some continuation of several thoughts that are strung together in a logical way, and all flow to some larger conclusion. Tweeting is a single thought or impression that is off the cuff. It almost flows naturally out of me.
I even find that when I want to write a blog post, it flows the best when I just start out tweeting. Before I know it it becomes a tweet storm, but breaking the work up into very small, bite-sized chunks makes the entire process manageable.
That being said, it makes sense for there to be some way to easily consume a tweet storm other than someone tweeting 1/ 2/ 3/ 4/. But I don't think that solution is saying, "Alright, go nuts, tweets can be as long as you want them to." My hunch is Twitter would lose an order of magnitude more value than it would gain by doing so.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPLK8lmsjq4