When Twitter announced they may lift the sacrosanct 140-character limit for their tweets, the reaction was immediate. There were those who loved it. And of course, there were those that hated it. As the social media addict I definitely am, I spent most of the day monitoring the social reaction to this #280character project to figure out which way the online community was leaning. Here are a few numbers, as well as the best tweets on the topic detected by our cool new AI-powered sentiment analysis technology (try saying that three times in a row!).
Since the original Twitter announcement last night, "280 characters", as a stand-alone expression or a hashtag in English, French, Italian and German, has been used a whopping 810.255 times - and counting! The number actually kept climbing as I was writing the article, so I decided to make things simple and integrate a live counter in this blog post for your convenience.
Also very interesting to look at the sentiment expressed in these hundreds of thousands of messages - over 78.4% of negative sentiment if you take away all neutral (news-oriented) posts!
Methodology: in this specific case, I tracked the #280characters
hashtag and stand-alone expression in English, French,
Italian, German, Portuguese and Spanish.
Getting the general sentiment picture is great, but the best part is actually going through the most popular reactions to this potential change to understand what people hate and love about that extra-characters prospect.
Oh shit I was selected as one of the special ones to tweet in 280 characters. HAHAHA suck it losers, I feel like God right now. Wait, I'm not done, I would also like to say that all these words I'm typing right now are useless and I wasted them just because I CAN. These too, lmao
— Big Cat (@BarstoolBigCat) 27 septembre 2017
Lots of users simply had a lot of fun with the whole idea.
I’m so excited to be part of @Twitter’s #280characters rollout. Let me just say it’s an honor and a privilege. I’d like to thank my wonderf
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) 27 septembre 2017
Why does Twitter need to expand the tweet length to #280characters ?
If you can’t express your point in 140 characters you’re clearly a mor
— Danny (@DannyCalidonia) 27 septembre 2017
great news about #280characters. every time I get on twitter I think MAN I wish there was twice as much of this
— Justin McElroy (@JustinMcElroy) 27 septembre 2017
280 characters are actually a lot. Thread will be easier to organise. More information in a single tweet. News agencies should capitalise this. One tweet with pic, one compact news. Boom! Double the characters, endless possibilities. Kudos Twitter. Oh yes, this is 280 right here.
— KNB (@nizambakeri) 27 septembre 2017
Some thought that Twitter should focus on improving other aspects of the platform.
twitter: what do you guys want
everyone: get rid of the nazis and fix the report system
twitter: did I hear 280 characters
— Goth Ms. Frizzle (@spookperson) 26 septembre 2017
But what would this new character limit mean for one of its most famous user ?
Trump. Con 280 caracteres. Piénsenlo
— Dori Toribio (@DoriToribio) 26 septembre 2017
Dear Twitter,
Please don't update the tweet limit to #280characters until we have a new POTUS.
Thank you.
— NUFF (@nuffsaidNY) 26 septembre 2017
One thing is certain though: the #280characters announcement is making some noise. Just watch the tweet from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey spread on social and beyond.
And a cool GIF showing how that same tweet was shared all over the globe!