140 Chances at Creativity

I remember hearing complaints (still do) around why Twitter chose 140 characters for status updates. Why not 200 or 256 or 1024? It turns out that number was initially selected for compatibility with SMS messaging. Though most modern tweets are not done via SMS (though many still are).

There has been an interesting by-product from this limit, creativity. Here are a few:

• URL shorteners such as bit.ly take long urls like this - http://www.brainfroth.com/2010/08/three-legged-entrepreneur-stool.html and turn them into http://bit.ly/95H7oh
• Hashtags offer the ability to "tag" or categorize tweets
• Third party tools such as twitpic offer hosting of media such as photos and video.

The point is this. How do you see the 140 characters? Do you see it as a limit or an opportunity to be creative?