MUMBAI: The line between news and views are broadening with time. Spontaneity is inclining thick and fast towards social media with Twitter leading the race while views and opinions are filling television sets. If we take the recent earthquake in North East India for example, the news broke instantaneously on Twitter and even the Richter scale measurement was first revealed on the micro blogging website. Traditional media took more than two hours to put the first ticker on as the natural calamity struck the territories in the wee hours of the morning. The story was quite similar when former president of India APJ Abdul Kalam collapsed at a gathering and later breathed his last.
If reports are to be believed then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is planning to take the micro blogging social media platform’s character limit to a whopping 10,000 from 140. Of the 10,000 characters 140 of them will be visible as a tweet and rest will be a part of a story, which can be accessed after clicking on the ‘show more’ option.
This is speculatively done to stay in par with rivals and is likely to be implemented by March this year. Facebook has instant article, a feature which at this stage is not available for all users. This feature enables user to write article and publish it in a story format. LinkedIn also has a similar facility with Pulse where one can publish their creative pieces. The facility though is an encouraging one for the writers and critics who prophesize with their words but Twitteratis are leaving no stone unturned to let Dorsey and his team know that they are totally against it by posting photographs like the ones given below:
"I am a fan of Twitter because it keeps my top floor busy. Compressing and expressing is the panache of the platform. Now I fear that I might just lose the flare to rambling. People can articulate more in terms of number of characters now but yes the magic is in bits and bytes,” said a senior journalist.
Millions of tweets have made Twitter 10K trend globally with most of the tweets signifying reservations against the concept. Now it remains to be seen if the flood of tweets make team Twitter change their decision or not.
