By Ryan Deal ’16

Everyone knows of Twitter, the hugely successful social media site that connects people worldwide all in a “Twittersphere.” Twitter largely came to be known for its brief “tweets,” publicly displayed messages from a user that capped off at 140 characters. The character limit was unique, and these quick-hitting messages provided a speedier fix for today’s hyperactive society.

However, as the technology site Re/code reported, Twitter is currently considering an update that would elongate the character limit to ten-thousand. Advocates for the change, like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, state that by allowing for longer tweets, a user would not be forced to use a screenshot or a series of tweets to get a message across.

Twitter prides itself on its conversational way of interaction. This advantage is gone should the limit be extended. Giant globs of text would clog up one’s stream, and it would make Twitter no different from Facebook, which also has no character limit and uses “likes” as an approval of one’s post. Twitter was once an original network which influenced social media; it has no reason to change.