Based upon what I recall from my computer science classes I would expect something near, but probably not exactly, 128 or 256.
Do you know the explanation for the 140?
Based upon what I recall from my computer science classes I would expect something near, but probably not exactly, 128 or 256.
Do you know the explanation for the 140?
Twitter was originally designed to be used primarily via text messages (SMS). Text messages, of course, have a maximum length of 160 characters (Cite).
So 140 characters left enough room for them to add in 20 characters worth of “Tweet from @SoAndSo” (or however they phrase it. I haven’t actually used twitter via SMS since I got a smart phone a few years ago).
IIRC, the limit on SMS messages was 140 bytes. Course, that just raises the question…
Now, if we can just find out what the character limit on SMS messaging is. . . .
It’s worth noting that Twitter is technically capable of sending longer tweets-- if you use Twitters “retweet” feature, then look at the retweet from another (non-Twitter-owned) client, the text of the tweet is: “RT @original_username original_tweet_content”. Meaning, if the original tweet was 140 characters, a retweet of it can be 140 + 3 (“RT “) + 20 (”@username”), 163 characters.
So basically, it’s arbitrary at this point.
I have discovered a truly marvelous discussion of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
The character limit on SMS messaging was set because their text travels through spare data bits embedded in regular (digital, GSM) cellphone transmissions, not though “data connections”. This is why pretty much all GSM phones can SMS, and you don’t need a data plan to do so. SMS was later added to other digital standards–CDMA for certain, and I believe iDEN as well, but I could be wrong. I’d be very surprised if the Chinese TD-SCDMA standard didn’t have it.
+1!
Ah, the famous Fermat’s Last Tweet!