All a-twitter over Twitter

All a-twitter over Twitter

Posted on October 2nd, 2017 by Jeff McDonald

I’m confronted with what one of my boys would call a “first world problem” …

Last week, Twitter launched an experiment, expanding the number of characters allowed on posts to 280 from the original limit of 140. The test, I read later, involves a small, random group of users (a single-digit percentage of the total users). It seems I’m one of the select few.

“We few, we happy few …”

Hmmmm, happy? Maybe not … at least, not in my case,. I rather liked the 140-character limit. It was a challenge to me. Could I communicate my thoughts successfully – and succinctly! – in my tweets? It required me to stretch my vocabulary, use punctuation more effectively, and move away from rambling rants and towards brief bullet-points.

Sort of a haiku for the new millenium.

I’ll be interested in learning the results of this experiment. For my part, I’ll be contributing to the 140-character end of the bell-shaped curve (or whatever) illustrating those results.

Just because I get twice as much space doesn’t mean I have to fill it. If I have more than can be said in 140 characters, I could always post something on “When Falls the Coliseum.”

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Jeff McDonald

There's a saying around here, something like, "I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could!" That's me. I'm a 'dang Yankee from back-east' who settled in the Lone Star State after some extended stays in the eastern U.S., and New Mexico. I worked as an archaeologist for a few years before dusting off my second major in English, and embarking on a 25-year career in journalism. Since then, I've embraced the dark side of the force, and now work in PR for a community college in Midland, Texas.