POLL: Character Limit on Identi.ca

There are still 140 Characters used and I'm really happy about that.
If there were more Characters I would not be able to maintain an overview. The strength of Identi.ca is that it can be used like a Newsticker and therefore messages have to remain as short as possible!

I think 280 is enough to say something and add extra information or even an explanation. Sometimes when you are quoting something you hear on the news, you only have enough space to quote and then not enough to add additional comments or thoughts.

This would also make identica more appealing to twitter users, who will feel restricted by just 140.

56% of the people who voted in this poll want something larger than just 140 chars.

I voted 280, although I'd be fine with 140, 140 is just a little short. And shorter than an SMS would fit (SMS is 160). The compatibility with twitter and facebook I do find important, but compatibility shouldn't stiffle innovation.

On the other hand, bigger messages would turn it more into a blogging system, they key to microblogging is that you can read in a very short line what something is about, or what is going on. Providing the possibility to scan lots of information at once and follow many subjects at once.

I think 160 or 280 would still be short enough for quick parsing, but the extra length would give the benefit to be more clear on the subject.

Unlimited is great option.

If Identi.ca and Status.net are to lead the OMB federating revolution (which they should) forking micro-blogging data elements is suicidal.

>140 is why blogs and URL shorteners were invented.

I think 280 characters is good.
it will give people & organizations a change to share information about events which people might want to know about.....

On the other hand, I think longer messages would be a good idea (and I might as well vote for 420), but on the other hand, I think Twitter compatibility is pretty important. If there'd be automagical splitting, that'd be nice.

I heavily use the Identi.ca to Twitter bridge that reposts tweets. If Identi.ca were to resize, say to the Facebook limit, then there would have to be some kind of auto-parsing to slice larger dents into tweet-sized dents.

Thanks for the discussion!

Cheers, Jeff McNeill http://seoindochina.com

140 is fine. its easy to read and understand message.

Keep 1000 as char limit. If char limit is crossed, automatically ask for subject and post to blog(if configured, else, just disallow).

If not crossed, allow to keep typing, but keep warning like this :

" 15 more to fill 4 tweets/SMS
295 more to fill 2 facebook statuses
440 more to switch to blog mode."

If it can be configured automatically to take the excess amount & supply a URL for that, so that it's consistent with Twitter, then the larger the better. If not, stay with 140.

140 is too short for a message, 280 is fine, more that this number is excessive and boring

I voted 280, but that was before I read the "140 but URLs are attached as metadata not counted" idea... that really seems like the way to go.

--Susan

333
e.g http://swisen.com/

#limit280 looks a good compromise: it forces messages to be concise, but at the same time gives enough space for information.

URI take space, and a lot of languages (French or German, for example) are less concise than English. Don't forget that identi.ca is not monolingual!

I think the 140 character limit used to be appropriate for microblogging (this is not blogging !), but now the message often includes one or several @username, !group, #hastags (not to mention URLs) so the real message is reduced to a few words. It is not enough.
I vote for excluding the @username, !group, #hastags and URLs from the count (maybe put some limit on @ ! # also otherwise spam could take advantage of it)
Excluding URLs from the count would allow full URLs to be used (shortened URLs are not lasting).
Then, keep the 140 character limit for the message alone.

For those wishing to repost to twitter, i don't know what become now the @ and ! groups and # internal to identica ? either skip them or as suggested, automatically cut the total message in 2 or 3 parts of 140 to ensure interoperability. the URLs remain a problem to repost (some exceed 140 alone) so urls shortening may be necessary on repost. Anyway, do we really need twitter ? ;-)

the shorter the

Well, this is not exactly a 'blog'. The original 140 or 280 is more than enough to share few words with the world!

At first I was leaning towards 420 (that's how I voted), but after reading Exador23's reasoning, I think we should go unlimiited.

The micro- in microblogging doesn't have to mean that everything is done with less characters. It's also about minimalism in terms of "ease of use, knobs to twist". I am not about to have a blog plus a microblog, as I have nothing I want to separate and segregate out as a blog.

If you like short character limits, by all means, use them! If you don't like longer-winded people, don't follow them! Let the market (in this case, your micro-society) work it out!

I vote for unlimited (site admin limits as they see fit), with outbound limited to some system configurable amount, where dents are truncated and a link appended, all under the limit. This allows admins to choose SMS or Twitter compatible, Facebook compatible lengths, etc. Let the application that bridges the two apps deal with the length as well as the embedded link to point them back to identi.ca.

Think about the term "microblogging". It's mere nonsene to expand the limit. Why? Becasue if I want this, then is use something like a weblog aka "blogging".

The brevity of these status updates is what makes microblogging unique. Instead of increasing the character limit, I would change the system so that posting a URL doesn't count towards the 140 character limit. Just my 2 cents. :)

I voted 280 but I like restriction on principle; forces me to be concise. If I want to ramble, well, I have a blog for that.

I vote for #limit140+; 140 characters shown, with longer decks hidden in an AJAX-y fashion; it'd be like Identi.ca would have a built-in and integrated TwitLonger.

I will likely to continue a self-imposed 140 limit no matter the outcome, but voted for 280. I like small/short/brief for the reasons others have noted.

I like the brevity of 140, but if it is frustrating to others, then I say increase it a tad. Spirit of giving, you know? 280-300? Not significant other than the pleasure of numbers.

That said, anything over 420 is too much. :-)

I didn't realize folks were commenting here. I should say my peace.

"New technological environments are commonly cast in the molds of the preceding technology out of the sheer unawareness of their designers." ~ Marshall McLuhan - Take Today: The Executive as Dropout (1972) [140c, 205c with full attribution]

I came to my >140 position by way of real-world data. I started quoting, in part, to hone my brevity skills. what I discovered is brevity has nothing to do with 140. brief, concise, powerful quotes are often >140 characters.

This study http://ur1.ca/l1g3 looks at sentence lengths in newspaper articles. please take a gander at the scatter diagram and distribution charts. An average sentence is 148.8 characters ~before adding any punctuation~. [really (mean word length + 1 for space) x (mean sentence word count) - i'm not a statistician]

Factor in meta-data (@username, #hashtag, !bangtag, http://ur1.ca/xxxx, attribution etc. (62c for this generic example)) and you realize that fewer than 1/3 of the sentences in that study would fit in 140 characters under typical microblogging practices.

140 came about because of SMS - an expensive technology not directly supported by identica, and destined for the bit bin with the advent of smarter and smarter mobile tech. Even so, it doesn't work - I have SMS enabled for DMs on twitter - invariably they come to my phone as two SMS messages, not one.

Why people would conflate brevity with twitter heritage tech is beyond my comprehension.

"Environments work us over and remake us. It is man who is the content of and the message of the media, which are extensions of himself. Electronic man must know the effects of the world he has made above all things." ~ Marshall McLuhan - Take Today: The Executive as Dropout (1972) [217c/283c]

Lets look at those effects: bad grammar, horrible sentence structure, dropped vowels, real-time flow of conversation is interrupted to edit for length (often resulting in dropped vowels), ambiquity, generalizations, questionable tone leading to unnecessary arguments, etc. etc.

In a nutshell, microblogging at an arbitrary limit instead of one ≥ the magical 80% point is dumbing down conversation. Does the world really need to be dumbed down more than it already is??

"In most people there is a deeply seated fear that prevents us from taking control of our lives and shaping them to suit us. It is a fear that keeps us average, keeps us doing all the same things everybody else is doing, simply because it is the familiar thing to do." ~ Meredith Keeney [287c with attribution]

I can't help but think sumbunall favoring the status quo do so without a grasp on what a real definition for brevity would mean, coupled with a general fear of the unknown.

to those fearing "people will become verbose","my screen will fill up", "i won't be able to scan my stream" and similar "the sky is falling" outcomes... Please, take a deep breath, then look at the public stream of brainbird with it's 300 character limit: http://brainbird.net/

To those fearing "it will anger my tweeps"... I occasionally bridge from brainbird. Not a single person on twitter has complained, in fact, when I've been in conversations with people there, they've gone to twitlonger to be able to match the edge given by brainbird's character-fu. And because my posts are truncated with a link, it drives traffic to brainbird, and I've fielded several questions regarding what brainbird/statusnet is all about.

On the other hand, I have had people on identica complain when I forwarded quotes to the first group I started on identica - group q. I think the complaints were less about the length of the quote and more about how it gets truncated, with a link to the full quote. Quite frankly it chaps my ass that I now can't access the group nearest and dearest to my heart, here in my self-exiled omb ghetto. to see what you've been missing: http://brainbird.net/group/q

To those fearing "look what happened to jaiku," bullshit! we've lost a lot of people to Friendfeed, which has a huge limit. Facebook has a 420 limit and millions of users (many of whom access it via mobile tech) - way more than twitter. In fact, I think plurk, twitter, and identica are the only viable microblogging platforms that are still in the dark ages. nice company - NOT.

Brainbird.net/exador23 is where I will remain until the limit is at least 240c - allowing for the possibility of just one single coherent, intelligent sentence. Is that too much to ask for? Life is to short to spend it butchering language to meet some rule made up by a company we all hate anyway.

Peace,
steve.

What sets microblogging apart *is* the very tight character limit. I voted #limit140.

There are zillions of weblog applications and services for people to choose if they want to be more verbose. The great thing about microblogging is that *every* post is short, so it's possible to get it at a glance.

Identi.ca should remain a microblogging site, with the 140 character limit.

Accept 1024, but only show the first 140 in timeline (reveal the whole message AJAX-ly if the user wants to see more).

It is already possible to link a followup post to the one it's continuing: click reply to yourself and then remove @yourname, replacing it with an ellipsis (or someone else's @username, if you're continuing a reply).

I think this has an advantage over limit280 in that users can choose where to make the break for federating/twitter-bridging. You do, however, lose 3 bytes/chars per dent to the ellipsis, but you can still spill over into a third post if needed.

I voted 280, but I'd prefer 256, as the SMS multiplier is meaningless to me. And a little more room would be nice for full URLs instead of shorteners, and for @people_with_really_long_user_names

I voted 140, but after reflection, what I'd like is 140 char and the group tags and urls don't count to the total. For SMS and forwarding to 140 char services split it into as many as required (probably only one more, but...)

I voted for 280. I like the general brevity of 140, but sometimes it's too short to contain even a single element/thought without resorting to some crazy abbreviations, so I think 280/300 would be an improvement.

It'd be even better if there could be a visual indication to make sure you know when you type past 140 characters, given that's the lowest common denominator.

A further comment - whatever limit is selected, even if it stays the same, the OMB protocol needs to take the fact that there are differences in settings on different servers, and either allow discovery of the limit when sending to a remote server (so the message can be truncated, for example), or handle the same at the receiving end.

Currently Brainbird truncates all its outbound OMB at 140, so identi.ca can accept them. It has no way of knowing that my server will happily accept 300, so I get them truncated as well.

I tend to follow or stop following someone's stream based on its content, which is in part how concise they can be. Making someone communicate a complex idea broken up into 140 character bursts isn't as useful as them just taking the time to spell it out in 400 characters. However, most folks will still probably do under 140 characters.

I think that on our internal installation I am going to turn off the limit, and observe how we use it. Sometimes it is definitely useful to have StatusNet act as forums for us as well as quick updates to each other.

I like much the Jaiku/Qaiku model, i.e. 140 char for a post and unlimited (or very huge) for the comments. This help to develop very interesting conversation, without loosing the main advantages of microposts, IMHO...

Regards,

Marco

140 for me but not for compliance with SMS or the legacy micro blogging platforms.

Yes, there are plenty of times, I am forced shave a space character or lose an entire word to fit within 140 which is irritating but brevity is all.

Even now, occasionally (and I freely admit it's occasionally at the moment) I see truncated posts from Brainbird - with a link to the full post - and guess what, I never click through as I simply can't be bothered.

However, if the site wide limit was increased on status.net, I suspect occasionally would turn into frequently.

Micro blogging is spontaneous, it's for the moment - if you want to write essays, try Tumblr or Posterous.

Less is more.

The main strength of identi.ca is for me that all messages are short and informatic. That makes it a kind of community newsticker.

If you increase the limit, then messages will get longer and I won't be able to get them at a glance anymore.

I voted for 140.

I think it is part of the charm of microblogging. And even if we don't have the most robust SMS support at the moment, we shouldn't break the SMS barrier.

If you want more characters, go to BirdBrain or a similar site. That's the beauty of OMB!

Screw the legacy Twitter crap. 140 is too small of a place to think. Not all the time; sometimes it's alarmingly perfect. I just want the option to go over once in a while. 280 is fine, 300 is fine. Anything over 420 might be a little on the obese side, though. But I think it's time to ditch this arbitrary limit.

It would be interesting to see how many people actually use a microblogging service with SMS. No, an Identi.ca client on your iPhone doesn't count.

There is no technical reason to limit the size of a message. Those who want to be brief can be brief, those who need more characters to dent a quote with attribution and a URL can do so too. Those who don't want to receive long messages can close their eyes after 140 characters.

Services that support only 140 characters can get multiple dents.

Feature request? Allow a user to limit the number of characters on RECEIVED messages. To target the largest possible audience, senders will have to keep their message short.

I wrote a simple messaging app on a PDP8 in 1978. It allowed 4 lines of 80 characters. It wasn't enough then, either.

--Bob.

but don't count R[D/T]:, http://, @, !, #, ♻

Identica is a microblogging service. It is not Blogspot or Wordpress.

I'd be fine with leaving the limit at 140 characters. But I voted 300 because I discovered recently that the complete URL of an attachment counts toward the limit for a dent. I had a dent that was rejected because I attached a photo.

My personal selection would be 250, which is PLENTY for what we all use identica for. But leaving the limit at 140 would also be fine by me.

as u know i'm used to 300 in BrainBird, but i can accept up to 420 too.