Did You Know Text Messages Inspired the Launch of Twitter?

Several people often have this question in mind “Why 160 characters?” The answer is simple, it is a restriction set by the networks. However, the answer is not good enough for many and so a few researched about why these restrictions came into picture. Here’s what the research had to say: back in 1985 a German engineer, Friedhelm Hillebrand sat alone in his room on his typewriter writing random sentences to try and determine the length needed for a text message. When counting the characters and words he found that for most sentences or questions, 160 characters were “perfectly sufficient”, this limit still remains for a single text message.

21 years down the line, Twitter was born during a daylong brainstorming session amongst a few colleagues as well as friends. Jack Dorsey first described the idea as a service that uses SMS to tell small groups what you are up to. Every individual in the group used SMS and instantly understood the idea and starting working on the idea with the help of co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone.

When the group first decided to launch twttr.com to the public following several months of testing, most people were still seen paying for text messages and the worry was that users would get huge amount of phone bills. A re-brand to twitter.com a few months later and although there was no character limit on the system, the team decided to put a restriction on the length of characters to ensure it remained with the 160 characters, they settled on 140 to leave room for the username and that limit still remains today!

When they launched Twitter, Jack Dorsey very proudly made a statement that said: Whether it’s a promotion or a reminder you have to communicate, our aim is to provide a service which uses SMS and enables you to tell your customers what you are doing. It’s that simple.