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March 24, 2008 / Filed under: Twordy, Twitter, Services, Personal

I created Twordy because I felt that Twitter's 140 character limit was an annoyance in some situations. There are times when back-and-forth conversational threads occur, making the 140 character limit nothing more than a roadblock in self-expression.

When I become engaged with someone else's tweet, and wish to delve further into the subject matter, I have a few choices:

1. Send incremental tweets until I've fully completed my thought.
2. Blog about it.
3. Email the person directly.

All of these options suck. Sending incremental tweets is sloppy and hard to follow. Blogging about it is sometimes ideal, but for quicker conversation, I don't have time to create a whole blog post on it. Emailing is OK, but with Twitter, you don't know the user's email address. Your choices are to @reply them, or direct message them. But in both cases, you're limited to 140 characters.

Micro-blogging has it's place, and that is for articulate, concise thoughts. It really forces you to get creative with your choice of words.

But a lot of "activity" on Twitter is centered around community, and in communities you need to be able to express yourself fully.

I see no value in condensing words and phrases so immensely, they become indecipherable to most people unfamiliar with "SMS language." Some people could stare at the characters "ne1" for an hour, and still not understand what it means. Their brain just hasn't adapted to that yet.

Back to Twordy.

Twordy lets you post as many characters as you wish. The service simply updates your Twitter account with a link to the longer, wordier, Twordy. It precedes that link with the first few words of your update. This provides some context so that users can decide if they want to click on the link.

I'm not sure where I'm headed with this idea, but I know I will use it quite a bit.