Twitter Lettersets. An Idea for Twitter.

I like Twitter. I’ve been using it since 2007. I’m not a power user, my business does not depend on it and the world will continue to turn without it should it succumb, stumble and eventually perish during the oncoming start-up bubble explosion. Yes, we can live without Twitter, but I’d rather not and as I’m concerned for its financial wellbeing I’d thought I’d offer a way for it to make money.

I’d like to make a couple of things clear before I begin.

1. The 140 character rule should remain holy (free of charge).
2. A blank space would be considered as a character (HT John Dodds). 
3. The idea outlined here is free for Twitter to use. I don’t want Twitter to fail (guys, we want you to succeed, just let me know if you do use this idea and respect the creative commons license on this post- CC BY).
4. If anyone else has had this, or a similar idea and written about it, please let me know and I’ll link and credit accordingly.

So here we go.

Finish the sentence.

Every so often I want to Tweet something and I run out of characters. Not by a huge amount, just maybe 3 or 4 letters off finishing a sentence. I’d like to finish my sentences on Twitter, in the style of my choosing. Being off by 3 or 4 or 12 characters often means that I must rewrite the Tweet, which is at best a tiny bit annoying but can also ruin what I’m trying to say. I presume we’ve experienced this. It’s a pain. 

This is particularly annoying when I’m writing Tweets in German, a language that by its very nature needs an awful lot of letters. Heaven knows how Twitter users in Finland get by.

Let us pay. Twitter Lettersets.

This got me thinking. I’d like extra characters for my Tweets. I’d be prepared to pay for them too. I’d like to buy extra characters for my Tweets. I’m not suggesting that Twitter allow their users to start posting 300 character Tweets. All I’m suggesting is that Twitter give us a little slack, maybe say, 14 characters that we could use to finish off the sentence:we’d just need to pay for the privilege.

Here’s how I’d see this working:

1. Twitter users could purchase Twitter Lettersets:
   1. 5 Dollars: 500 characters
   2. 10 Dollars: 1200 characters
   3. 15 Dollars: 2000 characters
2. The Twitter Lettersets are not transferable. Commercial Twitter Lettersets would be available for advertisers. Special Twitter Lettersets should be available for NGO’s and journalists. 
3. Should a Tweet go over the 140 character limit, the characters are marked red (as it is now, see screenshot above) but the user is given the option to either rewrite the tweet or rub off the corresponding number of characters from their Twitter Lettersets.
4. The user can only use a maximum of 14 characters per Tweet from their Twitter Lettersets.
5. The Tweet would be marked as a Letterset Tweet (analogue promoted tweet).

That’s it. I’d pay for this. Would you? I probably wouldn’t need to use extra characters all the time, just sometimes. What do you think? Let me know, on Twitter. 

Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International Lizenz.