Oprah Tweets, 103K Follow

You can't have 'meaningful interaction' in 140 characters

(NEWSER) - Call him a rebel, but Farhad Manjoo wants Twitter to double the number of characters allowed in a tweet. To many users, that’s sacrilege. But on Twitter’s fifth anniversary, “the 140-character limit feels less like a feature than a big, obvious bug,” Manjoo writes on Slate . “Forcing people to shrink their updates to 140 characters prevents meaningful interaction between users, short-circuits conversations, and turns otherwise straightforward thoughts into a bewildering jumble of txtese.” More»

Total posts up from 1B a year ago, 5B just 4 months ago

(NEWSER) - Twitter isn’t growing as explosively as it used to, but the volume of traffic on the microblogging site is still expanding fast enough that it should hit 10 billion total tweets in the coming days. That’s up from a billion about a year ago, and 5 billion just 4 months ago. Gauging the progress is quite simple, Mashable reports; just look at the number tag at the end of a tweet’s URL. A recent one read 9917803012, and the site produces about 50 million a day. More»

High proportion of Twitter quittersi mean 'Oprah effect' is overstated

(NEWSER) - Twitter's sign-up figures are skyrocketing but the site's reach will remain limited to less than a tenth of online consumers unless it can reduce the proportion of quitters, Neilsen exec David Martin tells AdAge. Over 60% of people who get a Twitter account soon abandon the service, according to Neilsen figures, meaning that surges in user numbers like the recent "Oprah effect" are hugely overstated. More»

It involves whining about a sandwich

(NEWSER) - How to be an ace tweeter? Megan Garber at the Atlantic pores over a new study and starts her lesson with what not to do. This would be "The Most Annoying Tweet Imaginable":

• "BREAKING: Last week I had a #sandwich that was SO HORRIBLE, it made me want to #scream. Seriously, why can't they make better #sandwiches?"

Dick Costolo will head day-to-day operations

(NEWSER) - Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams is relinquishing leadership of the microblogging site to COO Dick Costolo, reports the Wall Street Journal . "Building things is my passion," Williams offers as explanation for the move, adding that he asked Colstolo to take over. Adds Costolo, recently "it became clear to everybody that Ev's got to be able to focus on product strategy." The move also comes as Twitter looks to reap some sort of profitability out of its explosive growth. More»