I have been hearing the rumors that Twitter wants to increase the number of characters one can tweet from 140 to 10,000. It would only show the first 140, allowing a reader to expand the entire tweet.

In case you’re interested, 10,000 words is about 40 pages, so 10,000 characters would be perhaps 10 pages. That depends on a lot, though, including the types of words, lengths, narrative structure (2 people talking in brief responses, for example).

Regardless, I always appreciated the 140 character limit, because it forced people to be concise, terse, to get right to the point. People already use too many words to say very little. I fear it will get much worse if the rumors are true. Plus, the character limit led to some hilariously unfortunate tweets.

On the other hand, perhaps it will deal a blow to text speak, which was born out of the need for brevity in length-restricted communications. That would be nice.

I myself just started using Twitter a little while ago, and I find the process of constructing cogent, brief tweets that still get a point across to be challenging, and I always feel a sense of accomplishment when I do.

I wonder if they would have to change the name of the communication. 10,000 charcters is hardly a tweet. More like a squawk, a word I didn’t know how to spell until right now. Or perhaps a caw. Maybe a murder?

This should be fun.