What's so sacred about 140 characters?

Why 140 characters? The obvious answer, which I'm sure you know, is so that a tweet can fit into the 160 character limitation of an SMS text message. In other words, the Twitter user name (which can be up to 15 characters) followed by the 140 character tweet can all be packaged nicely into a single SMS text message.

Which begs the next question: Why restrict a tweet to the limits set by SMS when this is the World Wide Web? One of the "limitations" of e-mail and the Web is that you need Internet access for connectivity. In developed countries, we take Internet connectivity for granted. Having spend some time living in East Africa I was amazed to see how important SMS was to the locals who don't own computers, printers, or even have an e-mail address. But, nearly all of them had pre-paid cell phones and they used SMS just like we use e-mail (they also had trivial SMS to e-mail and e-mail to SMS bridges).

Additionally, their cell phone networks have features which I wish we had here in the US. Basically, people in developing countries have substituted the computer, printer, and Internet with the cell phone, fax, and the carrier's wireless network. This is how most of the world gets "online" with technology.

Imagine if Twitter didn't just go after the consumer market who own computers and smart phones with Internet access (I'm guessing about one billion people), but, instead, what if Twitter went after every person on the planet who's an active cell phone subscriber (which will reach 4.6 billion by the end of 2009). Now, that would be a fantastic communications tool!

Twitter's "Track" Command: Gone But Not Forgotten.

Twitter used to have a fantastic real time search command: Track

Sometime in 2008 it seems to have been turned off - probably because it generated too much SMS (text messaging) traffic.

Fire!
During the San Diego Wildfires of 2007 I was splitting my time between San Diego (Carlsbad) and Santa Cruz (Capitola). The wildfires broke out over the weekend when I was in the Bay Area. By Monday morning two separate fires were threating our home in Carlsbad. I went to sleep, Monday night, trying to prepare myself, mentally, for what it was going to be like once our home burned down.

Tuesday, as I drove down to Carlsbad, I wanted every piece of information I could find about the fires. Listening to XM channel 247 (emergency channel - a wordplay on 24/7) helped, but it was too broad since it was covering all the fires burning in San Diego, Orange County, and L.A.

This is where Twitter's Track command was a saviour (keep in mind that there were no iPhone apps back then). I simply texted some keywords to Twitter and every time someone's tweet contained one of those words it was relayed to me via SMS. I had Twitter track "Carlsbad" and the major road near my home, "Palomar".

Retweeting wasn't as popular back then as it is now so I received very few duplicate tweets. Nearly every tweet that I received - and I was receiving a new tracking tweet every five minutes - was helpful:
"It doesn't look like the fire's reached Carlsbad."
"Winds dying down and reversing direction - I can see flames from Carlsbad."
"Voluntary evacuation south of Palomar Airport Road."
"KPBS reports that fire in San Marcos, near Carlsbad, is 20% contained."
etc.

Luckily, the closest both fires got to our home was about four miles. Now, if only Twitter could bring back the Track command and ignore retweets.