Twitter Notes Spells The End Of Tweetstorms And The Original Tweet Concept

The core concept for Twitter was born and designed around SMS, which is old-school text messages. The original 140-character limit was, in fact, imposed due to the 160-character limit of SMS, something that is still in place but has been taken for granted thanks to how modern messaging apps work. Just as people have more or less outgrown those arbitrary constraints, Twitter users have tried to find ways to post longer text content on the social network, such as sharing a screenshot of a message written in a notes app. Soon they will no longer have to use these workarounds, at least if this new experiment actually gets out the door. At the same time, however, these longer tweets could also muddle what makes Twitter, well, Twitter.

Granted, it has always been excruciatingly painful to get your message across in 140 characters or less, which is why people have developed the notorious text-speak notation. Doubling the max tweet length to 280 characters did give users some breathing room, but by the time the new rule rolled out in 2017, it was already far too late. People had already been working around Twitter's limitations, some using third-party services while others just exploited Twitter's own systems.

Tweetstorms became a popular way to rant on the network — it works by chaining numbered tweets through replies to create a single thread. Twitter even officially embraced this practice by making it easier to create threads as replies the moment you create a tweet. Now it seems that Twitter is considering adopting yet another practice, allowing users to make longer tweets without using workarounds and hacks.

After preferring not to comment on a related leak, Twitter has officially revealed that it is testing out a way to post significantly longer tweets. The official teaser for the Twitter Notes feature showed something that looked more like an interface for writing blog posts or articles rather than simple 240-character tweets. Coincidentally, the earlier leaked version of this feature was called Twitter Article rather than Notes.

Twitter Notes solves many long-standing problems with tweetstorms and third-party apps or bots. You no longer get multiple notifications from someone you follow, and you don't have to go out of the network to view a lengthy post. It also makes replying and communicating easier because there'd be only one tweet to reply to instead of multiple ones in a series.

At the same time, it raises the question of whether this removes Twitter's particular appeal and unique value. Not all users will be posting lengthy tirades or ramblings, of course, but other social networks have always allowed users to write short posts as well as long ones without having to decide between the two. Either way, Twitter Notes will most likely make Twitter users happy and could give those on other networks more reasons to ditch their old homes and jump to Twitter's less restricted — but also more chaotic  — world.