Keller @ Large: Hey Twitter, Keep It Short
BOSTON (CBS) - We talked about the value of privacy Tuesday in a world where it feels like everything is relentlessly public.
Today, let's discuss the benefits of brevity in a culture where everyone – even your dog – has access to online forums with unlimited space to share their deepest innermost barking and whimpering.
Surely you're aware by now of Twitter, the online messaging tool where your musings are limited to tweets of 140 characters, letters plus spaces plus punctuation and embedded links. Twitter's popularity grew fast for several years, but that growth has stalled.
And in a desperate effort to jumpstart it, the folks behind Twitter are reportedly changing it to allow longer tweets, perhaps even up to 10,000 characters.
As the must-read Boston Globe columnist Michael Brodeur points out, this may not be the best idea.
"As uncivil as Twitter can get…there's always been something to admire in its embrace of restraint…. The selfie barrage of Instagram and the self-indulgent updates of Facebook can often seem embarrassingly excessive compared to the quippy efficiency and directness on Twitter."
By enforcing brevity, says Brodeur, Twitter forces you to think about what you're writing, at least a little bit, and "exercises in self-control are catch as catch can online."
I couldn't agree more.
We need more deliberation about a lot of things we do: the way we drive, the way we eat, the way we argue.
We demand more restraint and thoughtfulness from our leaders – why shouldn't we ask the same of ourselves?
Stick with the 140-character limit, Twitter.
Otherwise, you become part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Listen to Jon's commentary:
