By Michael Liedtke, Technology Writer
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --Twitter appears ready to loosen its decade-old restriction on the length of messages in a bid to make its service more appealing to a wider audience accustomed to the greater freedom offered by Facebook and other forums.
CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey telegraphed Twitter's intentions in a tweet posted Tuesday after the technology news site Re/Code reported the company is exploring increasing its limits on text from 140 characters to as many as 10,000.
Dorsey didn't directly address the Re/Code report that cited unnamed people, but he made it clear that Twitter isn't wedded to the 140-character limit. He illustrated his point by posting a screenshot of a text consisting of 1,325 characters.
If Twitter were to allow tweets to span 10,000 characters, it could produce 1,700-word dissertations, based on the size of Dorsey's extended post.
San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. declined to comment on its plans.
In his message, Dorsey wrote that Twitter has already noticed that many of its roughly 300 million users already have been including screenshots of lengthy texts in their tweets. He indicated Twitter is examining ways to give people more room to express themselves without polluting the service with gasbags.
Imposing some restraint "inspires creativity and brevity. And a sense of speed. We will never lose that feeling," Dorsey pledged.
At the same time, Dorsey said Twitter isn't "going to be shy about building more utility and power into Twitter for people. As long as it's consistent with what people want to do, we're going to explore it."
Analysts said Dorsey is probably trying to avoid a backlash among long-time Twitter users who consider the 140-character tweeting limit sacred. At the same time, he needs to respond to company shareholders pining for a bigger audience that would generate more advertising revenue.
More revenue eventually could help Twitter turn a profit for the first time in its history.
Twitter can't afford "to become stagnant, they need to get bigger if they want to build a more relevant advertising platform," said Topeka Capital Markets analyst Blake Harper.
After a long streak of robust growth that turned it into one of the Internet's hottest companies, Twitter's growth has slowed dramatically during the past year-and-half to leave it scrambling to catch up with social networking leader Facebook and its 1.5 billion users.
Twitter's malaise resulted in the departure of Dick Costolo as the company's CEO last July and ushered in the return of Dorsey, who had been ousted as the company's leader in 2008.
The pressure has been building on Dorsey to take drastic measures to accelerate user growth as Twitter's stock has sunk further below its November 2013 initial public offering price of $26. The shares shed 64 cents Tuesday to close at $21.92, a decline of nearly 40 percent from where they stood from when Dorsey became CEO last summer.
Dorsey helped invent Twitter in 2006 and imposed a 140-character limit on messages so the service would be easy to use on cellphones that had 160-character limits on texts at that time.
Those texting limits on phones faded away several years ago as the advent of smartphones enabled people to use other Internet messaging services, making Twitter's restrictions look increasingly antiquated.
Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter believes an increased limit on tweets would be a "good, baby step" to attracting more users to Twitter and believes it could be done without alienating the service's current audience. One way to make an increased limit less obnoxious would be to only show a limited amount of text in users' feeds and then leave it to each individual to click on a button to see more.
"Twitter is an afterthought in social media right now," Pachter said. "They need to do something to drive more usage of the service. If people start using the service more frequently, other users will come join in, too."
Local school staple “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” from 1939 hits the big screen nationwide
Most Maine schoolchildren know about the boy lost for more than a week in 1939 after climbing the state's tallest mountain. Now the rest of the U.S. is getting in on the story.
Opening in 650 movie theaters on Friday, "Lost on a Mountain in Maine" tells the harrowing tale of 12-year-old Donn Fendler, who spent nine days on Mount Katahdin and the surrounding wilderness before being rescued. The gripping story of survival commanded the nation's attention in the days before World War II and the boy's grit earned an award from the president.
For decades, Fendler and Joseph B. Egan's book, published the same year as the rescue, has been required reading in many Maine classrooms, like third-grade teacher Kimberly Nielsen's.
"I love that the overarching theme is that Donn never gave up. He just never quits. He goes and goes," said Nielsen, a teacher at Crooked River Elementary School in Casco, who also read the book multiple times with her own kids.
Separated from his hiking group in bad weather atop Mount Katahdin, Fendler used techniques learned as a Boy Scout to survive. He made his way through the woods to the east branch of the Penobscot River, where he was found more than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from where he started. Bruised and cut, starved and without pants or shoes, he survived nine days by eating berries and lost 15 pounds (7 kilograms).
The boy's peril sparked a massive search and was the focus of newspaper headlines and nightly radio broadcasts. Hundreds of volunteers streamed into the region to help.
The movie builds on the children's book, as told by Fendler to Egan, by drawing upon additional interviews and archival footage to reinforce the importance of family, faith and community during difficult times,... Read More