Big news coming from the Social Media Changes Department once again this week, as Twitter announced it will increase character limit in tweets to contain 140 characters while still including pictures and links.
In our world, the needle moves significantly when changes are made to social media platforms, be it logo alterations, branding or app functionals. As with everything on the internet, changes were met with reactions across the spectrum, ranging from absurd to cynical to excited.
Personally, we’re pumped at SteerPoint to add a few more letters to our own tweets, as carefully crafting tweets to fit into the confined character limit can be frustrating when media or links are added.
But the real question is does a character limit increase really matter?
CEO Jack Dorsey has a master plan to make Twitter more mainstream and easier for newer users. Many critics say Twitter is too niche or too difficult for new users to comprehend. Adding greater capacity supposedly overcomes many obstacles.
The problem in the first place is Twitter has continually attempted to rebrand itself towards mainstream non-users in an effort to bolster their bottom line. Nothing is wrong with this strategy, but Twitter constantly comes off as short-sighted in their decisions. Yes, people will articulate their arguments more efficiently with more characters.
But growing its user base seems like a relative impossibility at this point. With Twitter, people either get it or they don’t. And if you get it, then you’re likely intensely loyal to the platform and are completely happy with the way it is. People who don’t get it in many cases think they can get the same services provided by Facebook or Instagram. And to some extent, these people aren’t necessarily wrong.
Avid Twitter users laughed when Dorsey hypothesized about changing the character limit to 10,000, and they’ll laugh at raising the character count to a steady 140. That’s the nature of the audience — it really doesn’t matter all that much.
The platform’s evolution will exist in the same groupspeak of dedicated users who rely on Twitter for news, social life, information, etc.
Figure out how to fit in with that herd, and your brand can succeed. That’s what really matters — not character count.
SteerPoint is a full-service digital marketing agency that helps businesses across the country achieve a greater reach through social media, web development, content creation and SEO techniques. Contact us today for your Twitter services!