2/

One of Twitter's defining characteristics is that its posts are short. Both Mastodon & Bluesky were influenced by Twitter and also have short posts.

I have been wondering if — one of the reasons Twitter became popular is that — posts (on Twitter) were easy to consume because they were short.

Even when Twitter changed from a 140 character-limit to a 280 character-limit that was still true. Still short enough.

3/

Even a Twitter-thread, while long, is divided up into short, easy to consume pieces.

Sure, an entire Twitter-thread could, for example, be 35,000 characters in total, but —

You read a Twitter-thread in small, easy to consume pieces.

This is also true of Mastodon-threads and Bluesky-threads.

4/

Not too long ago, Twitter introduced the ability to write very long articles in a single post.

(A feature for paid Twitter users.)

Now, you could already write long content on Twitter as a Twitter-thread. You just had to break it up into smaller posts.

To me, these long single-posts feel more difficult to read than a Twitter-thread.

(I have seen others express similar, too.)

And, this is despite being able to have the same length of content in a Twitter-thread.

What is the difference‽

5/

In modern (offline) writing, it is common for people to break-up their writing into smaller pieces.

Into paragraphs. Into sections with headings. Into chapters. Etc.

When I read a large book, I might not read it in one sitting. I might have to pause my reading, and come back to it later.

When I do that (pause), I usually read up to the end of a chapter or the end of a section. Etc.

Having the text divided into pieces makes it easier for me to both pause and return to my reading.

6/

Maybe the short post format encourages people to change how they write.

Maybe the pieces of a Twitter-thread, Mastodon-thread, Bluesky-thread, etc — are not just easy to consume because they are short, but —

Maybe they are easy to consume because the author was encouraged to put a "single idea" in the post.

And encouraged to write each post so that it makes sense without having to read the rest of the 'thread'.

So that a 'thread' is a chain of easy to consume standalone "ideas".

7/

I think short form video parallels what we have seen with the short form text content of Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, and others.

Short form video (currently) being — TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Vidzy, Loops, and others.

The short form video format is encouraging creators to put a single easy to consume idea in each video that can standalone by itself.

Just like short form text encouraging people to put a single easy to consume idea that can standalone by itself in each post.

8/

Given that short form video is paralleling short form text —

Will we eventually see the short form video version of a 'thread'?

I think creators are also trying to do this (short form video 'threads'). I have seen them already.

There just doesn't seem to be a "good" way (from a user-experience (UX) point-of-view) to "chain" them together yet.

Twitter originally was 140 characters of [ Latin alphabet ] text.

When twitter brought video in-house into their core platform,

effectively killing third-party video platform twitvids,

I wondered why maximum video length per tweet was two minutes and 20 seconds?

140 characters of text...

140 seconds of video?

Bazinga!

Perhaps a technical short-cut by substituting characters for .mp4 data blobs?

cf.

JapaneseTwitter & ChineseTwitter

Each character is a "word"

140 WORDS / Tweet.