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Show, don’t tell.
It’s a general rule for writers, and it was a helpful tool for Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Tuesday afternoon, just a few hours after Re/code reported that the company is working on a feature that would allow people to send tweets that are 10,000 characters long. (The current limit is 140 characters.)
As expected, Twitter users freaked out, so Dorsey tweeted an explanation for the potential change, and he did so in many, many characters. Because Twitter can’t accommodate more than 140 characters in a single tweet, Dorsey shared his much-too-long explanation as a photo instead.
In other words: This tweet is an example of why we’re thinking about expanding the character count.
“We’ve spent a lot of time observing what people are doing on Twitter, and we see them taking screenshots of text and tweeting it,” he wrote. “Instead, what if that text … was actually text? Text that could be searched. Text that could be highlighted. That’s more utility and power.”
https://twitter.com/jack/status/684496529621557248
This is the closest Twitter has ever come to speaking publicly about the feature, referred to internally as “Beyond 140.” The product could launch as early as March, according to sources, but Dorsey didn’t acknowledge a launch date in his post. It’s clear, though, that Twitter isn’t afraid to make drastic changes to the product in its effort to jump-start user growth and its sagging stock price.
“We’re not going to be shy about building more utility and power into Twitter for people,” Dorsey wrote. “As long as it’s consistent with what people want to do, we’re going to explore it.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
