Why 140 characters? That is the question. Why this seemingly arbitrary limit on tweets? Perhaps to create a uniform feed? After all, your Twitter feed is very design-friendly. Very symmetrical. Even the super-short tweets don’t look out of place when next to a maxed-out 140-character scrawling. Perhaps that’s all it is? A design choice?
But now as we see the stats that 40% of all tweets are coming from mobile devices and growing, we may need to reconsider our theory. Because maxing out your typing time using a smartphone touchscreen is actually a kind gift. The mandate of brevity. The saving of patience.
And by reinforcing the idea that short is indeed sweet, it makes the mobile future for Twitter seem less daunting a user experience than some social networks.