Twitter's 140 Character Limit

This cluster centers on discussions of Twitter's original 140-character tweet limit, its origins from SMS constraints, pros and cons for brevity and discourse quality, and comparisons to the later 280-character expansion.

📉 Falling 0.2x Other
3,503
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#2999
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
5
2008
37
2009
174
2010
169
2011
145
2012
127
2013
165
2014
147
2015
227
2016
396
2017
372
2018
146
2019
145
2020
206
2021
227
2022
285
2023
280
2024
133
2025
108
2026
9

Keywords

US UCS2 IMO RWB DM GSM BTW VSRE SMS characters 140 twitter limit sms character 160 length discourse chosen

Sample Comments

monk_e_boy Jul 27, 2016 View on HN

Was that over twitter? 140 characters is very restrictive.

black6 Aug 31, 2018 View on HN

Ain't like we're limited to 140 characters...

FlorinAndrei Apr 19, 2010 View on HN

Well, Twitter only allows 140 characters, so...

Gmo Oct 12, 2009 View on HN

Well, the 140 characters might be a limitation factor (although it helps being concise ...)

blhack Aug 10, 2009 View on HN

because twitter limits you to 140 characters of input.

profeta Dec 2, 2015 View on HN

which proves that having more than 140 chars is overrated anyways.

fyrabanks Aug 7, 2013 View on HN

"I dislike being limited to only 140 characters when trying to convey my thoughts and ideas, so I've never really been a fan of Twitter." <-135 characters (+conveys the same info)

elmerfud Nov 27, 2017 View on HN

You can't expect people to read more than 140 characters.

pg Jul 17, 2008 View on HN

Looks like sometimes that 140 character limit is a problem.

Ekaros Nov 29, 2021 View on HN

How come 280 characters isn't good enough. Or really should have done it in 140 as they intended...