Post by @wrog@mastodon.murkworks.net

@wrog@mastodon.murkworks.net

2026-03-09 18:58 UTC

@dougmerritt I don't think it had anything to do with SMS. Twitter was an internet service from the start and Dorsey's decision was a matter of taste/branding/marketing; the notion of a service that *only* allowed short posts was Something New. Receiving a twitter feed as SMS texts on a cell phone would have been insane (and probably also expensive back then).

Replies (1)

@dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz 2026-03-09 19:04

@wrog > I don't think it had anything to do with SMS. But you would be wrong. Don't mess with the bull, you'll get the horns. I was not only there, I worked in that space at that time. (I did more than languages, compilers, and operating systems because I got bored periodically. I've also done OCR algorithms, to name another thing that doesn't seem to fit with the rest.) > The idea was initially pitched as an “SMS for the web”,... > Why 140 characters? The limit was inspired by SMS text messaging, which capped messages at 160 characters. Twitter reserved 20 characters for the username, leaving 140 for the message itself. https://blog.easybie.com/twitters-origin-story-how-140-later-280-characters-changed-global-discourse/ So it was at *least* inspired by SMS. But more than that, it gatewayed to and from SMS, so it retained the SMS limit of necessity to continue gatewaying -- for a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_(social_network)#Appearance_and_features Wikipedia stops just short of having an adequate history by itself.

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