On the theory that it takes more characters to say something in English than in Japanese and Korean...

... and that those who tweet in English have a disadvantage on Twitter, Twitter is talking about expanding its character limit from 140 to 280.

Although we feel confident about our data and the positive impact this change will have, we want to try it out with a small group of people before we make a decision to launch to everyone. What matters most is that this works for our community – we will be collecting data and gathering feedback along the way. We’re hoping fewer Tweets run into the character limit, which should make it easier for everyone to Tweet.

How many of us who experience Twitter in English even noticed that people who tweeted in Korean and Japanese were able to cram more meaning into a single tweet? I can't believe this was the pressure Twitter felt from users about the character limit. I can believe that there were Twitter insiders who could see that Twitter functioned differently in Korean and Japanese and arrived at the opinion that English-speaking Twitter users would appreciate a similar freedom to write without feeling so much pressure from the character limit.

I know, as a writer, I prefer blogging to tweeting because I like having the power to decide how long or short to go, and I think that works out for me, as a writer, because I go for concision on my own. But as a reader, I prefer Twitter. I read it several times a day and follow over 200 tweeters, while I read woefully few blogs. Bloggers tend to relax, get blabby, and don't edit for concision.

Twitter is about brevity. It's what makes it such a great way to see what's happening. Tweets get right to the point with the information or thoughts that matter. That is something we will never change.

But it is going to change!

We understand since many of you have been Tweeting for years, there may be an emotional attachment to 140 characters – we felt it, too. 

Like it's just a fetish and not something that really makes the reading experience better. 

But we tried this, saw the power of what it will do, and fell in love with this new, still brief, constraint. 

280 is still a limit, and Twitter may very well be right that 280 characters (in English) is better because of what it's already seeing writers do in Japanese and Korean. I might tweet more at 280, because after writing a blog post on a subject, I don't like the distraction of figuring out the puzzle of figuring out what the core thought putting it in as few words as possible. I can see what is lost, and I'm doing more work to fit their limit. I'm all about living freely in writing, so why would I want this endless restraint?

Fortune writes:

Many Twitter users try to work around the 140-character limit by posting their more verbose thoughts in a series of tweets, called "threads" or "tweet storms," with each subsequent tweet a "reply" to the previous post. Earlier this month, Twitter started testing a feature that allows users to pre-write a series of tweets and then post them all at once as a thread.

All of these tests and new features are examples of Twitter trying to make its service more user-friendly, as the company tries to battle disappointing user growth that has weighed down the company's share price (TWTR, -2.30%). Twitter's latest character limit test also comes at a time when the company is facing criticism over its efforts to cut down on the amount of offensive content, including hate speech, that is posted on the service.

I think Twitter is thinking about writers, not readers. Twitter — the hungry business — needs more and more people joining the giant conversation. For that, it needs to be fun and easy. Challenging writers to keep it super-short must seem to limit the growth of the enterprise. But how will the reader experience change? Perhaps it will be great. 280 characters is still short, and over-compressed writing can be harder to read. Certainly, the thread and "tweet storm" work-around isn't fun for the reader.

And maybe freedom from excessive compression will help with some of the problems that are seen as "offensive content." A few more words might eliminate some of the brusqueness, ambiguities, and misinterpretations. There might be less advantage in getting off a sudden potshot. With more room to write, you might take more time and cool off a bit or be tempted into elegance or wry humor or perhaps even hear the call of higher values.

I pasted that last sentence into the Twitter compose window and the 140-character limit cut me off before I could say "of higher values."