Dear Commons Community,

Here is a development that is sure to catch the eye of the Twitter world.  As posted on a New York Times blog:

“For nearly a decade, the defining characteristic of the tweet — the unit of communication on Twitter — has been its brevity: Users are restricted to 140 characters.

That may soon change. Twitter is experimenting with introducing a longer form of tweet, according to two people familiar with the company’s plans, in what would be another gradual move away from the simplistic design sensibility that the service was originally founded upon.

The project, which internally has been referred to as “beyond 140,” is still in its testing phase and is not set to be introduced until at least March, said the people, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the company’s plans. Twitter has not determined what the final tweet character limit will be, according to people familiar with the discussions. One number that has been tossed around internally is 10,000 characters, the same limit that users have inside private Twitter messages. Another possibility could be 5,000 characters, these people said.”

I am not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing but it has the potential to add hours to the average Twitter user’s day.

Tony