Regarding the article "Twitter may allow much longer tweets" in the Jan. 7 edition, expanding the 140-character limit to 10,000 characters would make Twitter no longer Twitter.
If there are 10,000-character tweets, they would cover my timeline and I will not read them. To give an example of a 10,000-character tweet's length, the short story "Run, Melos!" is about 10,000 characters. Loosening Twitter's restriction will have a negative impact on the ease and sense of speed that comes with the 140-character limit.
Also, loosening the restriction will destroy the aesthetic of a strict character restriction. For example, there is the haiku form of poetry. Haiku express joy, sorrow and other feelings, scenery and nature, with very few characters. In a haiku, it is very important to omit extra words to emphasize what you want to say.
It is fun to think about how to tweet your readers with brevity due to the character restriction, just like a haiku. If the limit disappears, everyone will begin to write long tweets. I will not "like" their tweets.
Although companies may earn more profit by easing the word restriction, they make up only a small percentage of Twitter's users. At most, Twitter should only take away the character restriction for tweets by companies, striking a compromise that satisfies both supporters and opposers of the character-limit expansion. In this way, Twitter will evolve.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.
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