Why is a Tweet restricted to 140 characters?

This week I'd like to share some information about the social media space.

If you are an active user of Twitter, you would have noticed a recent announcement by the company. Twitter will very soon lift the 140 characters limit on your tweet. Usernames, media files, etc will not be counted in the character limit, which will allow Tweeters to make use of more characters to express themselves.
But have you ever wondered why tweets on Twitter are restricted to 140 characters?
Well, Jack Dorsey (Founder of Twitter) said in a 2009 interview to LA Times that when Twitter was launched in March 2006, it mainly worked by sending SMSes from 1 mobile to another, so the company had to ensure that each tweet would fit in 1 SMS to make it easy for messages to be exchanged. Since SMS has a limit of 160 characters, the guys at Twitter stuck to 140 characters, leaving 20 characters for the user name.

But wait a minute, then why does an SMS have a limit of 160 characters?

That's all thanks to German communications researcher Friedhelm Hillebrand, who analysed various forms of message, including his own writing, telex messages and postcards, and figured that the average message would comfortably fit within 160 characters.
He was the chairman of the non-voice services committee for the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) & when they defined their Short Messaging Service (SMS) standard in 1985, Hillebrand recommended that 160 characters was sufficient.

And the rest, as they say, is history :)

Remembering JFK on his 100th Birthday

Hello & welcome to another edition of the GK Nugget. This weekend we’re talking about one of my favourite politicians (yes, there are some likeable ones too), who passed away too young. He was the leader of one of the superpowers of the world and 29 th May 2017 was his 100 th birth anniversary. I’m talking about John Fitzgerald Kennedy , famously known as JFK . JFK was the 35 th President of the USA from January 1961 up until 22 nd November 1963 , when he was assassinated. He was the youngest president of the country and also the youngest to die . JFK’s inaugural address had him reach out to all Americans – “ Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country ” – a line that is till date quoted in essays written by school and college going children. JFK led the US at the height of the Arms Race with Russia and also during the critical Cuban missile crisis . (In October 1962, U.S. spy planes discovered that Soviet missile bases had

Do Big symposium - New Delhi

After Bangalore, Pune and Kolkata we touched down in Delhi to talk about digital disruption. Digital disruption helped me in my travel as well, since my flight from Mumbai to Delhi was delayed by 2 hours owing to fog. While sitting in the plane on the Mumbai tarmac, I saw a tweet from Indigo Airlines saying that flights had started taking off from Delhi, and then in under 5 minutes the captain came on the PA system and announced that we would finally be taking off. This is a small example, but this could be a great opportunity for Makemytrip.com or similar companies or even a new start up to develop a business around providing travel updates- flights or trains delays, road traffic jams, etc - pan india. Anyway, back to the symposium, the keynote speaker for the evening was the former President of NASSCOM ( the premier body for the indian IT industry) Mr. Som Mittal . He spoke about how Voice as an activation tool is coming up and will make a marked difference in the way

This week's biggest fad!

How's your Sunday going? This week has seen the year's biggest fad develop - No, I'm not talking about the excitement around Kabali . Instead I'm talking about Pokémon Go . So this weekend's GK nugget is about this augmented reality game that is making people run around their neighbourhoods with their smartphones held high. First up, what is Pokémon? Pokémon is the name of a game released by Nintendo 20 years ago . It's a cult classic and led to many video game sequels, TV shows, movies & merchandise being sold. So why the excitement 20 years later? Nintendo has added a new twist to the game, using new age technologies which are easily available in smart phones (cameras, GPS & augmented reality capability) . So now people are downloading the app on their mobile phones to play the new version - Pokémon Go . And what's so different about the new version? When you start the game, Pokémon Go uses your smart phone's camera &

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