back to article Twitter's 280-char blog mode can be enabled client-side. Just sayin'

Twitter's plan to limit public trials of 280-character tweets has been foiled by web devs, who discovered the feature could be enabled by twits on the client-side. Yesterday, the milliblogging giant announced it had begun tests in which a "small group" of selected users would have their per-tweet character limit doubled from …

  1. djstardust

    This is great.....

    I can now tell Scotrail, Ryanair, M&S & WH Smith why I dislike them so much in finer detail.

    Thank you Twitter.

    1. paulf
      Thumb Up

      Re: This is great.....

      @ djstardust "I can now tell Scotrail, Ryanair, M&S & WH Smith why I dislike them so much in finer detail."

      On the last one it's much better to tell @whs_carpet then we can all have a laugh at the atrocious retail shiteholes that are branches of WH Smith. Expect photos of tatty carpets, rusting baskets, plus aisles strewn with obstacles and detritus.

  2. Lysenko

    Thank God the Orange Menace almost certainly doesn't read this sort of news and wouldn't be able to follow those instructions even if he did: "curl ? My toupée has no curls!! Fake news. Sad."

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Double trouble

      You're living in a fool's paradise, Lysenko. Trump doesn't need 280 chars when he can just post twice. But I guess you didn't you care about that when you sprayed your wasted hatred into the thread.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Double trouble

        @Big John

        I get the feeling from this and other posts that you are a Trump supporter.

        Could you explain to me what he has actually done in his time in office that deserves your support?

        I ask this because and albeit from the media I can't work out what he is actually doing to make America great again. He is trying to remove health care for a lot of Americans which I see as a bad thing, he's reducing corporation tax so I'm unsure how these things make America great for all and not just some. I'm not even going to get started on best Korea and Iran as that is just beyond my comprehension of what exactly is he trying to achieve.

        1. BongoJoe

          Re: Double trouble

          @AC

          I think that it's plain to see that Trump is some sort of neo-cryptoAnarchist and that his plan is working quite successfully, thank you ever so much.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Double trouble

            @BongoJoe

            It's not plain to see unless you ask questions of people. Once you ask questions it then becomes difficult to defend a position or belief. There isn't any point labelling trump this or that because that's what the media is doing and by doing it for them you enamel the position of his supporters. Asking questions relating to his conduct or his actions is more productive.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Double trouble

              I don't bother listing Trump's successes and successes-in-progress because every item I list as good will be denounced as bad by those who hate him.

              A wall to stop millions of unvetted people from pouring into the country? Racism!!!

              Reducing Obama's huge regulatory overload? Disrespect! They're all GOOD regulations! Oh, and racism!!!

              Conducting foreign policy from a standing position? Warmonger!!!

              Considering our nation's welfare ahead of other nations' opinion of us? Bigoted white supremacist!!!

              That's how the left wants it now. Total War. Well, the rest of us are now aware of this, because it's impossible to ignore, just like a screaming baby. But babies aren't allowed to control government, which is why the Democrat Party lies in tatters at all levels. America is sick of the screaming and the lies.

              Everything's changed, except the Left. Every time you guys lose you double down on stupid. It's breathtaking to behold and sad at the same time.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Double trouble

                You're really comparing democrats to screaming babies, when your guy in the white house is the biggest baby of them all?

              2. ukgnome

                Re: Double trouble

                Dear John,

                By the time you read ......oh wait, different letter.

                When people are deluded it is difficult to move them away from their delusions with the use of medication. When Trump gets his healthcare it will be even harder as that is a pre-existing condition. This means the deluded will continue on the path towards who knows what, possibly a rise in the reich. Trump is a facilitator of this. His rhetoric, his use of social media and his dumb as stance on things like climate change are damaging not just to America. It's OK as we have our own dumb politico, actually thanks to how elections work / don't work we have quite a few.

                What I am trying to say is your view is so skewed by your delusion that absolutely nothing could change that. You come across as quite a lonely person that feels some how threatened by invisible Mexicans, dictators near china and ex presidents. Maybe you just need to take a long hard look around you and see the beauty of things.

                You won't of course, as you are far too frothy mouthed with such indignation that you now feel the only way is marching forward. It makes no difference if you are left middle or right with your politics. Just don't expect a majority of people to think the same as you.

                Don't get all butt hurt.

              3. Ralph the Wonder Llama
                Meh

                Re: Double trouble

                "babies aren't allowed to control government"

                They are if you vote for them. No-one said democracy was perfect.

              4. 's water music
                FAIL

                Re: Double trouble

                ...successes-in-progress...

                Could I borrow that for my next project status report? TIA

                I won't be using this icon any more--->

              5. Afernie
                Trollface

                Re: Double trouble

                "I don't bother listing Trump's successes and successes-in-progress because every item I list as good will be denounced as bad by those who hate him. <SNIP>"

                From here on out I'm going to assume Poe's Law is in effect, and you're just laying it on really thick.

          2. Barry Rueger

            Damned Trump basher! (Was: Re: Double trouble)

            Trump is some sort of neo-cryptoAnarchist

            Come on, just because Bannon and Trump seem intent on dismantling the entire structure of government does not make them "anarchist."

            You really should stop insulting them.

            (The anarchists, I mean.)

        2. Brangdon

          Re: Trump achievements

          There's one list from 5 months ago here: https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/63nxsn/update_i_was_tired_of_liberals_saying_trump_hasnt/

          It is a mixture of easy stuff (like appointing the judge), negative stuff (revoking anything Obama did), and executive orders. The EOs generally are not so much achievements as instructions for someone else to look into achieving something, often without a real budget.

      2. Lysenko

        Re: Double trouble

        Hatred? I mentioned that someone is Orange (fact), Menacing (fact), wears a non-curly toupée (obvious fact) and probably doesn't know command line Linux (assumption, I grant you). The rest is quotation.

        Are you arguing that the hair is real, the skin tone is natural, North Korea wasn't threatened, he writes bash scripts in his spare time and he's never bemoaned "Fake news"? You really want to ride that train?

        1. unitron

          Re: Double trouble

          You're saying that he couldn't find a better toupee than that?

          Seriously?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Terminator

    Emperor Trumperian

    The Union of Seriously F*cking Terrified Scientists and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Who Think We Should All Just Calm Down moved their clock up to 5 milliseconds before Midnight. Pray Trump is not one of those "select users". In the Real Universe where Spock doesn't have a beard, does Trump tweet about kittens and sunsets and this poem he just wrote about little ways to make Life Beautiful for everyone? *sigh* *heavy, heavy sigh*

  4. Nunyabiznes

    Great.

    Now muppets with f-all to say can do it twice as much per twit.

    At least twitter is an opt-in "service".

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I don't understand

    Surely you can just fit more in by using a smaller font?

  6. Dwarf

    Never understood why ..

    The underlying technology choice from something that most people don't use these days (SMS text) still dictates the message size.

    Files aren't limited by disk block size

    data transfers over IP aren't dictated by the size of a packet

    Even SMS messages can be more than an old style SMS message

    Letters in envelopes aren't limited by the number of words on a single A4 page

    So why oh why should twatter still care about an old technology message size.

    Surely if they can join together two payloads, then they can repeat that several more times.

    1. Velv

      Re: Never understood why ..

      So make it unlimited characters.

      Congratulations, you’ve just invented Facebook.

    2. Pascal

      Re: Never understood why ..

      Holy crap if SMS is "a technology that most people don't use these days" I must live in a weird place :)

      But at any rate twitter limit was in no way technology-related, it was a design choice, they wanted to create an instant short-message feed. It's part of their branding, so to speak.

      As another poster said, make it unlimited and they'd be just another Facebook knock off.

    3. Adrian Harvey

      Re: Never understood why ..

      It's like haiku - in that the prescriptive structure actually forces some creativity and gives tweets a style and uniqueness. Take that away and Twitter becomes just another social media.

      Not that I'm much of a Twitter, or any other form of social media, but it's limitation is a special sort of uniqueness.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Never understood why ..

        > Take that away and Twitter becomes just another social media.

        I thought it *was* just another "social media".

  7. This post has been deleted by its author

  8. Prosthetic Conscience
    Joke

    Brexit, then Trump now this..

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Meh

    Where's the story? I really couldn't give a flying f**k about Twitter and its Twats. It seems to be a magnet for everything that is bad about digital communications, and for the pea-brained retards unable to express themselves in any longer form than an SMS.

    Even including such grim names as Facebook and Uber, I still can't think of an organisation that has added less to the sum of human history than Twitter.

    1. scrubber
      Trollface

      Re: Meh

      If you'd have managed to keep your opinion to under 140 charts maybe more people would have read it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Devil

        Re: Meh @ scrubber

        W's story? Couldna gv flyn f**k bt TwittTwats. Magnet 4 bad sht n ‘tards w/out gr8 wrd sklls. Een sht like FB, Uber ad mor to world n Twtr

        Happy now?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Coat

          Re: Meh @ scrubber

          Happy now?

          Hey! Which bastard downvoted that? I thought that was f***ing genius, and I'd have upvoted myself if I could. No pleasing you lot.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The only twater shite I see are newspapers publishing the retarded stream of steaming cack Trump seems to put out daily.

    It always surprises me that anyone is there to read it.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Curl?

    You need vector mechanics to double the length of tweets? Or is it done by curling up a dimension very small so you can get more of it in?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Curl?

      Div and Grad look on in dismay.

  12. scrubber
    Mushroom

    Trump-tastic

    Now we can declare war on North AND South Korea, and maybe even Nambia, all in a single tweet.

    1. 's water music
      Mushroom

      Re: Trump-tastic

      Now we can declare war on North AND South Korea, and maybe even Nambia, all in a single tweet.

      No silly, you don't need to declare war on Nambia, you simply close and lock the wradoobe door.

      Come to think of it we could probably reach a mutually beneficial arrangement to share our global warming with their eternal winter and kind of meet somewhere in the middle.

      No need for that sort of thing--->

      1. A K Stiles
        Joke

        Re: Trump-tastic

        As long as they keep their wildlife contained appropriately. Can you imagine late night outside a dubious Essex night club:

        "Excuse me, I don't suppose you gentlemen would know the whereabouts of my good friend Caspian?"

        "Fack me! Gary, look! It's only a fackin' talkin' Badger!!"

      2. scrubber

        Re: Trump-tastic

        If we keep the wardrobe door open we could resolve global warming...

  13. tiggity Silver badge

    Still too short

    Twitter 140 chars is is fine for short, pithy messages.

    Dismal for more complex arguments.

    The short message limit could be partly related to it being a morass of trollery and simplistic, non numaced comment

    Lots of people wanting to cover something in depth end up doing lots of tweets so you see thread with entries marked 5/23 or whatever.

    Or, even worse, posting large comment as an image (to screw screen reader software)

    Or, in many cases, saying heres my facebbok post that covers this in detail (I'm sure Twitter have a good idea how much traffic (lost revenue chance) the low msg limit is driving to longer facebook articles

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Still too short - Dismal for more complex arguments.

      Has anybody ever achieved anything useful by trying to put a complex argument on Twitter?

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So

    Does this mean that the bots are going to have to work twice as hard generating automatic text and liking each other's outputs? Is that good or bad?

  15. MrT

    I remember when...

    ...twttr first started letting us use vowels - doubled message length right there. Then folk got sloppy and started, y'know, using punctuation, full sentences and suchlike. Youngsters today don't know the 'alf of it; you try and tell young people today that... and they won't believe yer.

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