On Tuesday, Twitter announced it was rolling out its new 280-character limit to all users, after testing the feature with select accounts in September. Some people — in particular, writers — had some pretty strong feelings about it:
J.K. Rowling thought the change undermined the point of Twitter.
Twitter’s destroyed its USP. The whole point, for me, was how inventive people could be within that concise framework. #Twitter280characters
Stephen King was not a fan of it either.
280 characters? Fuck that.
And also agreed with Rowling.
Joyce Carol Oates retweeted another writer's poem about how tweets have now lost their "certain charm and sweetness."
If Emily Dickinson was on Twitter One hundred forty characters - A Tweet was - just that long - The briefness had… https://t.co/zLAHWHYaZc
Rainbow Rowell was "genuinely distressed" about the change.
This is small and stupid, but am genuinely distressed to see people on my feed shifting into 280 characters. It’s not scannable.
Gary Shteyngart made a sarcastic joke.
Oh, my god I can't believe I now have 280 characters. I can hardly imagine all the exciting things I'm going to do… https://t.co/Mdu0xYxOgQ
Meanwhile, Maureen Johnson said she still had the 140 character limit.
Also I am #still140. Perhaps Twitter is afraid of my POWER.
Ayelet Waldman retweeted an article about how all Twitter users wanted was an edit button.
Brad Thor also just wanted an edit button.
All we wanted was an edit button. #280characters
John Green, however, thanked Twitter and said he'd probably use the extra characters "extremely unwisely."
p.s. Thanks for the 280 characters, twitter. I will use it extremely unwisely, just like I use every other facet of twitter.
As will we all, probably.
