Okay. So by now you’ve heard all the buzz about the big #twittersecret (read: “Twitter’s Secret” for you non tweeting types), and you’re wondering what’s going on. What is this big secret that everyone is clamoring to know? I’m afraid you’ll be a little let down if you’re not a die-hard twitter fan. So I’ll let you down gently…
Twitter’s big secret involves Direct Message (DM) tweeting, which is sending a tweet directly to another tweeter without posting to the entire tweeting public. Apparently, when DMing you’re allowed 115 extra characters to tweet with… that’s a full 255 characters for DM tweeting. Wow.
This is big news to the tweeter community who are used to the regular 140 character limit on tweets. Here’s the message (sent as a DM in twitter) that reveals the secret:
“So here’s the secret: A couple of days ago @davidson & @lebrun discovered that DM’s don’t have to be just 140 characters. That’s right | this is where it should have ended but it didn’t did it? No actually you can send up to 255 characters.” (source)
This is likely to be because the cell phone text message (SMS) limit is also 255 characters, and many people have twitter set up to send text messages to their cell phones. Why not offer people the extra 115 characters?
So who started this #twittersecret anyways? Was it a marketing attempt by an entrepreneurial tweeter? Did they know that you would be so intrigued that you would click a TinyURL link in hopes of uncovering it?
Well, now that you’re here be sure to check out the rest of our website! And now you know the secret.