Innovation at 280 Characters
Twitter to invigorate it’s platform with an extra 140 characters
The length of a tweet has been a point of debate for quite some time. While some people like the limit, which really forces a person to edit down what he or she wants to say, others say it limits the success of the Twitter platform by not allowing complete messages to be heard. And, now, 11 years later, Twitter is expanding that “arbitrary” choice with what appears to be a new — albeit still arbitrary — choice.
Just because something is arbitrary doesn’t mean it can’t be a successful innovation. In fact, the success of Twitter proves that statement. But this expansion of the character limit doesn’t feel like an innovation; instead, it feels uninformed and unprepared to improve the company’s ailing stock price.
It’s too early to tell whether the character expansion will help Twitter, but it’s important to look at Twitter and understand what it is and what it wants to be. Twitter’s slogan is that “It’s what’s happening,” indicating that Twitter views itself as a broadcast platform. And, based on the top 4 users who are following significantly less than 1% of their followers, this is a true statement.
So a strategy of “more of the same” seems to be correct. But the company is struggling to make the current broadcast platform strategy work, so why would “more of the same” improve it?
Are the majority of Twitter’s users looking for more characters from those that they already follow, or are they looking for more from the platform? Will 280 characters turn out to be an innovation, or did Twitter solve the wrong “real problem”?
Craig Damlo is an innovation coach and the founder of Soap Box Rocket, whose goal is to help ignite a culture of innovation for you and your team. Visit http://www.soapboxrocket.com to see how he can help you.
