Wednesday, September 13, 2017

A Storm Is Coming…A Twitter Tweetstorm, That Is

What is a Twitter Tweetstorm?

A Tweetstorm is a series of related tweets posted by a Twitter user in rapid-fire succession. It's usually used to make a broad statement or commentary as a way to get around the 140 character limit. The problem is that these tweets can be hard to follow because they are all separate, even if the user gives a "shout out" to his community that the statements are part of a thread.Twitter Tweetstorm Recently, it seems a Twitter user discovered a way to create a series of Tweets on their Android phone that are all linked together and can be sent simultaneously. Even though they are individual Tweets, they can be all sent concurrently to show as one connected conversation.

Not Available To The Public...Yet

This feature hasn't been launched as of yet, but it's in the works. Here's more information about the person that figured it out:
By institutionalizing tweetstorms with a graphic user interface, Twitter could make sharing expanded thoughts more accessible to everyone. Whether it’s telling a suspenseful story, stringing together breaking news facts, or going on a long-winded rant that should have been a blog post, tweetstorms let you distribute deeper and more nuanced content. Under the pseudonym Devesh Logendran, a Twitter user passed on their sighting of the tweetstorm feature to TNW’s Director of social media Matt Navarra. Twitter told us “No comment to share on the record” when we asked about the feature that refers to tweetstorms as “threads”. We have no additional information on if or when this feature will ever launch, but have learned that it’s not currently available for public testing. See the full post here:  Twitter has an unlaunched tweetstorm feature

Cursory vs Comprehensive

There has been an ongoing discussion at Twitter concerning allowing users to post more extended dialogue. Those in favor of keeping the 140 character limit feel it is what makes Twitter unique and forces people to choose their words carefully and creatively. Others want the platform to allow longer, more in-depth conversations. It seems like this new feature would be a combo of both. This video provides a rundown of what the benefits a Tweetstorm will bring to users and its potential downsides of longer tweets in your timeline: Will Twitter release the Tweetstorm feature? Some are saying no, but it depends on how much of a priority it is. Looking back to the beginning of 2016, Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey posted a message about the 140 character limit that was, ironically, a screenshot of a much longer message. He said that when the limit was put into place, it was based on the max number of characters for an SMS message. The CEO said is part of what Twitter is, but he also hinted toward allowing longer conversations by saying, "I love Tweetstorms! Those won't go away." There was a lot of conversations about this revelation, and here is one response to the news of the secret Twitter feature:
Twitter has slowly moved toward loosening up their rules by doing things like excluding an image link from counting toward the 140 characters in mid 2016. They also made Twitter handles (@mention) not part of the character count a few months ago. Even though their identity has always been short, sweet and to the point, letting people express themselves in an extended fashion, even if there are limits to how many posts per day, might be the best of both worlds.  

The following post A Storm Is Coming…A Twitter Tweetstorm, That Is was originally published to http://ssprosvcs.com

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