I’m not patient; I want 280-character tweets right now! And I got ’em…
Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNETWelcome to the Upside-Down: Twitter is now testing 280-character tweets.
As of yesterday, a select group of users found themselves with twice as much room to share pithy thoughts, rants and jokes. You didn’t get chosen for the test? No problem.
I’m not one of the chosen few, but I’m now expressing myself in full 280-character glory. What devil-magic is this? Oh, just a little code magic I’ll be writing about shortly. If you want to join the long-winded elite, stay tuned for a link! #somuchforbrevity
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Dutch Twitter user Prof9 created a bit of code that forcibly enables the feature for Google Chrome desktop users. Here’s how to join the 280-character party:
Step 1: Fire up Chrome and install TamperMonkey, a top-rated userscript manager. (Userscripts are bits of code — kind of like mini extensions — usually designed to improve the browsing experience in some way. To learn more, check out this roundup of six useful Greasemonkey scripts.)
Step 2: Click here to visit the GitHub page containing Prof9’s script, amusingly called Twitter Cramming.
Step 3: Click the Raw button to install the script. Don’t be surprised if it seems nothing happened, or if clicking the TamperMonkey icon in your Chrome toolbar reveals no scripts running.
After installing TamperMonkey, visit this GitHub page and click Raw to add the Twitter Cramming script to Chrome.
Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNETStep 4: Head to Twitter — and tweet! Your character counter will stay frozen at 140, but you should be able to type a full 280 characters, at which point you’ll see the usual red “you’ve gone too far” indicator.
As with anything involving scripts and your browser, install this at your own risk.
Of course, assuming Twitter decides to go forward with #280foreveryone, you can always wait for it to become official.
In the meantime, what do you think of the extra space? Long-overdue improvement, or a betrayal of Twitter’s core value: brevity?
