Tech CEOs, founders, and VCs react to 280 characters on Twitter

Yesterday on LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner, the company’s CEO, commented on the new 280 character format on Twitter.

“May not be fun to parse & read tweets at that length but must admit it’s a lot easier to write,” Weiner wrote on LinkedIn after posting his first 280 character tweet.

I thought it was interesting to see a tech CEO commenting on Twitter’s new format. And I asked myself: what are other Silicon Valley and tech industry leaders saying bout Twitter’s most-talked about evolution?

So, I decided to dig a little bit deeper.

Ev Williams, founder and CEO of Medium — and a co-founder of Twitter — said he likes the idea of longer tweets but thinks “Most tweets will not get longer, just because they can (or they’d all be maxed out today).”

He continued: “Sure, some will get a bit lanky, due to laziness. But that’s a small cost for more expression and utility.”

Jonah Peretti, founder and CEO of BuzzFeed, did not comment explicitly on the new Twitter length but posted an article by Daisuke Furuta, BuzzFeed Japan Founding Editor, about how Japan have had longer tweets since the very beginning of the platform.

“Don’t worry — it’s fine here in the long-tweet future,” wrote Furuta. “You’ll love it, or at least you’ll only hate it as much as you hate Twitter already,” he added.

Fred Wilson, co-founder of New York City-based venture capital firm Union Square Ventures, is not a fan of 280 characters.

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should #280,” he wrote in a series of tweets. “To be clear. I’m not against #280. But I think less is more, always,” he added.

Commenting on a post by a Twitter user that explained “I’m against it. Not in some deeply felt way, but it seems to defeat the use value,” Wilson responded: “Yes, if people abuse it.”

Aaron Levie, “Lead Magician” and CEO of Box, simply wrote: “Twitter just disrupted the entire cropped screenshot of text industry. Brutal.”

AOL, Inc. founder Steve Case has not mentioned the new 280 character format on his Twitter feed, but he retweeted a tweet from Stephen Colbert that quoted Shakespeare.

Brevity is the soul of wit. The soul of wit is what brevity is. Brevity? Soul of wit? They’re the same thing. Like if you had brevity in one hand and the soul of wit in the other, you’d be hard pressed to tell them apart.

Chris Messina, BarCamp co-founder and father of the hashtag, commented: ‘It’s a bit more work and my brain doesn’t really have enough attention to cope with all the extra information in each tweet, but I’m sure I’ll adapt.”

He closed his 280 character tweet with one of the funniest comments on Twitter’s new format:

Please consider the environment before printing this tweet.

M.G. Siegler, general partner at GV, formerly Google Ventures, “doesn’t like what #Twitter280 is doing to Twitter,” referring to how it’s going to affect the platform’s “scan-ability.”

“I know, I know, cue the world’s smallest violins,” he writes on Medium. “I’m complaining about not wanting to scan an extra sentence or two. But as you scroll through a feed, this adds up. And, of course, it leads to more scrolling.”

Siegler also puts forward a suggestion for Jack Dorsey and his team: allowing 280 characters only for replies. His tweet led to an interesting back-and-forth with Adam Michela of Combine, a design and venture firm in San Francisco.