Twitter's 140 character constraint wasn't artificial in the beginning. Twitter was meant to be used through SMS and that was the maximum message size.

Twitter didn't adhere very strictly to SMS limitations.

For as long as I can remember, Twitter allowed 140 Unicode characters, whereas SMS limits messages to 140 bytes.

To be fair, Twitter's constraint is 140 code points, and SMS was 160 7 bit ASCII characters.

I think the extra characters were for the twitter handle

But on the other end of that, 140 code points is more data than can fit in an SMS.

May be more data that can fit in an SMS.

...yes. It's pretty common to talk in terms of worst case...

The unicode extensions for SMS only allow 70 UCS-2 code points. So from the perspective of ASCII, SMS can too big to fit into a tweet, and from the perspective of Unicode a tweet can be too big to fit into SMS.

Tweets to me look like a product manager liked the constrained aspect of SMS, but didn't dig hard into the details.

At Remind we operate one of the largest SMS delivery systems out there. We also have a 140 character limit, reserving 20 characters for the handle/class name.

In aggregate, having the limit is a cost decision. We absolutely can and do send messages longer than 140 characters. But we make a best effort to limit it to a single SMS segment. If some are over, oh well.

When Twitter first came out, in the US it was common to pay for receiving SMS not just sending. Multipart messages weren't always handled perfectly before modern smart phones, often they would be delayed or be received in the wrong order.

interestingly Europe was all over SMS messaging in the 00s, but it didn't really become popular in the US until this decade, when carriers starting bundling unlimited SMS in plans.

Was the first version of Twitter only ascii?

20 chars for handle

Maybe they padded it for unicode?

That's not enough space for 140 unicode characters.

  01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789

Seems to fit just fine. Unicode characters ≠ non-ascii characters.

I believe this comment is causing the HN comments page to display wider than usual (on a laptop, with chrome)

Fixed now.

If only Twitter was so responsive in fixing their abusive bullying problems.

It's giving me a scroll bar, which is weird.

(Desktop with Vivaldi)

I don't buy that. It would have been trivial to support multipart SMS. You know, like all phones since forever.

-Edit- Okay, I was wrong. Forgot to think before I posted.

Multipart SMS wasn’t trivial to stitch together then, absolutely did not have universal device support then, and in a few cases do not support it now.

Source : own an MVNO

To save others a rapid Google: MVNO is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operato...

You own an MVNO? That's amazing. I have a few questions regarding setting one up - if you have time, I'd like to ask you over email. My contact info is in my profile.

Buy it or not, that was their stated reason. Tweet/text twice if you needed a longer message.

Don't take my word for it, here it is from Jack Dorsey himself: https://twitter.com/jack/status/912784057863245824

I see this as a more general group of apps which connect you with people because of some reason. The main attraction is that you don't need to provide a reason yourself.

This is not necessarily bad, in fact I'd count be my eyes in the same group (an app which receives FaceTime calls from blind folks in order for you to help them out)

I went to check out Be My Eyes, because that sounds awesome.

It’s free, and they keep the video streams... and metadata, and place cookies, and tracking pixels, as per their TOS.

It’s another one of those “free app so we can collect all your data” plays.

Too bad. It was such a nice humanitarian idea, and now I have to delete it.

Just like #general/#random was often the most active channel on chat networks. Common interests brought everyone to the network, but most people really just wanted an excuse to find some friendship.

I'm hoping for one that you can only use if you're sitting next to the other person.

In my office we use iCloud shared Notes to say terrible things behind the boss' back. Bypasses the company's IT system, so it can't be restricted. And each person erases the previous message, so it can't be recorded like SMS.

It can be denied with a policy profile.

Unlikely since the sharing of iCloud notes is essential to our workflow.

Or, similarly, wouldn't it be cool to have a chat app that would detect people in the same geographic location traveling at the same speed. So your contacts would be the other people in the bus or train or plane that you're traveling in.

When I was at TomTom, they ran a contest for employees to come up with fun ways to gamify their internet-connected GPS Personal Navigation Device3s.

Some wise guy came up with the brilliant idea of maintaining a real-time "Top 10 Speeders" leaderboard for every single road on the entire map. Kinda like Foursquare for speeding on local roads. No matter where you were driving in the world, you could instantly see the top ten speeds of other TomTom users who drove down that same stretch of road, and put the pedal to the metal to claim or defend your own spot on the leaderboard!

That one went over like a lead balloon with the legal department.

The only thing worse would be a chat app for texting while driving above the speed limit with other Leaderboard members along the same stretch of road.

They also didn't appreciate my proposal for TomTomagotchi: a simulated personality on your PND that relentlessly begs you to drive it all around town to various interesting places it wants to visit, to improve its mood and satisfy its cravings. (Kind of like having virtual kids!) I'm sure there's a revenue model having drive through Burger Kings and car washes pay for placements.

A notepad and pencil?

That's genius, if we could upset the notepad and pencil industry, we would be huge!

They had apps like this during the early 2010s and they bombed hard.

The timing has to be right, a lot more young people have been raised where communicating through an app is the default way of communication and actually talking to someone is really weird.

About as successful as the Portable Cone of Silence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcKHBgZ_QKU

How about ‘bored’ which is a chat app that only works when detected in a moving vehicle so your passengers have some like minded entertainment.

I was thinking the same, but “high speed train”. Only works when going 160km/h at ground level in the right polygons.

"Must include picture"

God, that gave me a flashback. Does anyone remember what this app was called, back in the iPhone 3G era? I used the hell out of it for a short while back in 2008 or 9.

That also gave me nostalgia for old iPhone games that don't exist anymore - Tap Tap Revenge (RIP), Jelly Car, Tap Defense...

Side note: I had to type the quote out because Android/Firefox refused to pop the paste dialog in that box. No disrespect to the Android team and all they've achieved, but I don't understand how text selection and copy/paste on mobile is still so awful.

Not even freaking original Angry Birds doesn't exist anymore. The current "classic" version is nothing like the original one.

Snapchat started like that...

Copy/paste is working fine on my phone with Android on both Firefox and Chrome. It is just a long press.

Oh, wow. I have to long press precisely on the text cursor -- anywhere else in the text box won't work. That could definitely be improved.

No. You can press anywhere on the input box and it still works. I am really curious which phone you are using.

> Does anyone remember what this app was called, back in the iPhone 3G era?

DailyBooth, perhaps?

How about a chat app for people lying on their back, that you can only use when the screen is upside-down?

When it comes to social systems, constraints are really good. Twitter is a prime example within the social network space, but you can generalize further. Sports are fun because of the constraints they place on play.

If you find the right set of constraints, you can create something quite compelling.

Twitter is prime example that if you load tons of money no matter how crappy your product is you can make money out of it. They succeeded into making celebrities use it.

It's interactive performance art, imo. Not practical, but offers a unique social experience.

I’d like one where you make a group and set a recurring time and you can only post on the group at that time.

Why?

Because I want to balance my desire to have social connection to friends overseas with my need to manage compulsive phone-checking behavior.

Because I want the chat to be a conversation with people.

‘Must be a passenger in a Tesla to connect.’

Go 0-60 in 3s to activate.

How do you prove you're a passenger and not the driver?

If someone is driving and accelerating 0-60 in 3s while using the chat app the problem will likely sort itself out.

+1 for Pocket City. Definitely worth the $2 (or whatever it is now)

I am waiting for the app (or the browser plugin) that let me post only if I am sober enough. "Don't and post".

How about an unindexable anonymous drunkweb that runs separately from the regular web?

Maybe we can reserve part of IPv6 for this?

Or you just go semi anonymous trash posting on 4chan.

Terminal patient chat app?

(Actually sounds like a good way to connect people with others going through something they're going through.)

Like all “good” tech ideas this isn’t a terribly bad idea on its surface. It has no tech requirements. Running this just sounds like a nightmare. I really don’t want to be adminning griefing and trolling targeted at cancer patients.

Well run moderated communities for the dying are nothing new.

I kind of miss when Twitter only allowed 140 characters. Tweets took a little more thought to put together. Now, twitter is basically Reddit 2.0

It seems that it wasn't until 280 characters became possible that people started using Twitter like a blog with one post split between 20 or 30 messages. I wonder if that was coincidental, or one thing led to the other.

Nah I saw plenty of this just before the change, seems more likely that the change was put in to reduce annoyances with multi powt tweets.

That should of-course be "multi post tweets", must have fat fingered that one.

I’d reply ... but first I need to do a handstand on my toilet cistern.