Twitter Removes 140-Character Limit From Direct Messages
Twitter today announced a major change to the way Direct Messages work on the Twitter platform, removing the 140-character limit that restricted the length of private messages. With the change, Twitter’s Direct Message feature is on par with other chat and messaging apps, allowing for unrestricted conversation.
Except that, presumably, sending URLs is still restricted.
It was around this time, nearly 3 years ago, that I posted my last tweet. My bet with Daniel is over whether I will return to Twitter within 5 years. People ask if I’ll come back sooner, and if I did, what it would take. I’ve often struggled to articulate those conditions, because I think we are seeing slow but consistent progress to unwind the developer-hostile decisions made a few years ago. It may be that in a couple years the environment will be much improved, but there won’t be any single decision that “fixed” it, or it may be that Twitter is doomed to have changing leadership and there will never be any guarantees.
There is one thing, though. There is one change that was made while rolling out the version 1.1 Twitter API: they removed support for unauthenticated RSS feeds of user tweets or timelines. If they reversed that one decision, the next day I would be back on Twitter.
Update (2015-08-18): It looks like Twitter has allowed DMs to include URLs since December (via Joe Fabisevich).
3 Comments RSS · Twitter
"There is one thing, though. There is one change that was made while rolling out the version 1.1 Twitter API: they removed support for unauthenticated RSS feeds of user tweets or timelines. If they reversed that one decision, the next day I would be back on Twitter."
That one change really reduced my consumption of Twitter.
I've never been a signed-up user, so in a certain sense, Twitter really shouldn't care about me at all. But in another sense, back when they had RSS support, I did read it a lot more, which indirectly should help their overall ecosystem dominance, and thus their monetization efforts.
So I agree with Manton, but without the adequate foresight, I doubt Twitter cares.
