Twitter Expands Beyond 280 And It's Not All That Bad
Twitter has never been known to provide it's users what they want. Generally any changes to the platform since the user community created the hashtag (incidentally, Happy 10th Birthday Hashtag), have been at the whim of the Twitter leadership.
The community asks for the ability to segment 'favorites', Twitter gave GIFs. The community asks for the ability to edit a Tweet, Twitter gave 280 characters.
140 Is Gone Forever I'm a 140 purist. I love my 140 characters. I accepted the removal of @replies and multiple photos from the character count. It's actually pretty good without them taking away from useable space.
But when 280 came out? Hold the phone... where are my edits?
And now... if you thought 280 was bad, just think of being able to not just type 280 characters, but to then have the ability to add another Tweet right in line!!
Add Tweet
That's right. Now you can make a string of tweets... you can do it until your hearts content. Or actually, 25 times. Just think of the character count on that! 7,000 characters and I know out there somewhere is a person right now using up everyone of those characters creating the Twitter based remake of War and Peace.
There is no need to actually send the first tweet to start adding tweets though. You can compose then hit add, then compose then hit add and so on... or you can compose, tweet go to the tweet you just posted and add to it in the same manner.
Until you actually hit Tweet or Tweet all, you can just keep adding tweets in the same way.
Once you've posted the tweet(s), there is a different look, but it's the same function.
Watch Your Order
In your timeline the tweets will appear in the order that they were posted (created) so if you are going to make a story consider what it will finally look like once you hit tweet. If you want it to fall in a particular order you might want to adjust how you put it all together.
As you can see in the example about the new process also includes all the functionality of a regular tweet... pictures, gifs, polls, location.
Practical Applications
Several ideas come to mind about how this can be used. On-going events that you want to track all the posts together would be a great use along with telling a story about 'behind the scenes'.
You are literally creating a log of your tweets and that can be an amazing tool for issues management and crisis communications.
People still like, RT and reply to the individual tweet posted, not the entire chain, unless you consider the last tweet the end of story.
The only real difference in what you see in your notifications is the words, "Show this thread" at the bottom of the notification.
I'm kind of excited to see how creative minds will use this new tool that the Twitter Gods have given us.
Now, go out be that creative mind and show us what you have to help make your community safer, stronger and more connected with your agency.
Have a great and safe day.
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