Twitter: remove the limit of 140 characters, healthy approach – The World

Le Monde | 01/06/2016 at 11:22 • Updated 01/06/2016 at 12h37 | By Philippe Escande

Discontents twittosphere . The most famous – and talkative – World chat room will free speech of its members. The CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, confirmed that his company was planning to remove the sacred 140-character limit for messages broadcast by Internet users. Outcry from fans, who equate the decision to surrender and already see the network is complete, whole novels and die slowly under the weight of his obesity. By losing its specificity, the most famous social network in the world after Facebook also give up his soul. “Art is born of constraint, lives and dies struggles for freedom” , already reminded Gide.

There is some truth in it, and the matter should not be taken lightly. The impact of information is all the greater they are brief. This can be seen at every major disaster, which devotes Twitter as the most reactive of the major mass media, the attacks in Paris to recent floods in Britain. The tool is simple, accessible and very effective.

Need legitimate

Yet the thinking of leaders of the firm part of a healthy process and two observations. The growth of Twitter is down and the practices of its users are changing. Some time ago that tweetos blithely circumvent these famous spatial constraints. Jack Dorsey and his colleagues found they did more, either by posting photographs of entire texts or by sending a “tweet storm”, ie a multitude of mini-messages related to each other and constituting a long text. Novels have even been written that way.

Responding to this need is perfectly legitimate. Especially if the site wants to expand its audience. In the third quarter of 2015, the basis of its active users reached 320 million people, or 1.5% more than the previous quarter. At this rate, it will not catch up soon Facebook and its billion and half members.

The film was converted to speaking, then color, or 3D, although each transition has generated its share of nostalgic

Above all, this half-mast growth casts a threat to that of its advertising revenue, although they are expected to show an annual growth of nearly 50% in 2015. Change the length of the messages used allow it to multiply the products, as has already begun to do in 2015.

n ‘is not abnormal as Twitter grows with network performance, allowing all sizes of messages. After all, the cinema was converted to sound, then color, or 3D, although each transition has generated its share of nostalgia. Like its predecessors, press and audiovisual media of XXI ^th century still seeking the winning formula that allows them to combine audience and economic stability. But this is not necessarily the number of characters that will make the difference.