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I know this may seem like an inane question but was there any reason why Twitter picked that number as the limit of characters per tweet?

In addition, in hashtagging on Twitter, it doesn't allow for special characters (/,.? and so on). Again, any reasoning behind this?

This is more for curiosity sake, thanks!

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Messages it has to do with it being the same length as SMS messages. That also explains, to a small extent the lack of special charecters. I also think this is both off topic, and NARQish, since the only people who know for sure are at twitter! –  Journeyman Geek Jul 20 '12 at 0:29
This question can not be answered reasonably –  Baarn Jul 20 '12 at 0:40
@WalterMaier-Murdnelch Umm, I believe I did just that... –  imtheman Jul 20 '12 at 0:42
@Peter Maxwell: You provided interesting reads but still, unless there is a definite (official) answer from twitter, it can't be answered for sure. I mean, why did twitter choose 140 if the perfect number was 160? ;) Even if it is counted as a real question it is still off topic here on superuser. –  Baarn Jul 20 '12 at 0:45
Did you read the article? It says "140-characters was chosen as a good length, leaving 20 characters for the username of the sender. This way, anyone receiving a tweet via SMS would get the whole tweet in a single text message, with nothing spilling over into a second or third message that pops up minutes later." –  imtheman Jul 20 '12 at 0:48
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closed as not constructive by Journeyman Geek, Bob, techie007, studiohack Jul 20 '12 at 0:50


1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote accepted

@JourneymanGeek is right, it's because that's what the standard is for SMS. However, that also brings up the question, "Why does SMS only allow 160 characters?" It's because that's all they could fit in data line that they decided to use for SMS.

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