If you post regularly on Twitter, and have constantly felt constrained by the 140 character post limit, then Twitzer might be the Firefox extension for you. Twitzer is a Firefox extension designed by the developers of the shortText website, which lets you post entries longer than 140 characters on Twitter. It's pretty simple to use: once installed, navigate to Twitter and type a post as you normally would (ignoring those big red warning numbers on the right hand side of the text box as you go over 140 characters).
When you're finished, right-click on the box, and choose "Twitzer text". That's it! Your entry is shortened to less than 140 characters.
Magic? No, simple web sleight-of-hand. When you "Twitzer" your text, the extension automatically shortens your entry to 140 characters, uploads the rest to the shortText website, and posts a link to that text at the end of your entry.
Also available from the right-click menu is the option to "De-Twitzer" your entry or someone else's, meaning the full entry is shown on the Twitter website as it is saved on shortText.
While this is a good execution of a nice idea, we're a bit confused; we thought Twitter was in the category of micro-blogging...this kind of defeats the purpose, nay, the definition of, a micro-blog.
What say you? Will this extension, and other items like it, cause Twitter to bloat into extinction? Or, if used with caution and prejudice, can this be a helpful way to post your rants that exceed 140 characters?
[via Softpedia]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-05-2008 @ 10:51AM
Tom said...
I believe all the major websites have decided that twitter is like an RSS feed but they have to convert their URLs to tinyurls, but do it anyway and clutter up the space with that stuff because rss is so _hard_
ugh
(I have seen very few good uses of twitter, and I kinda think soma fm's use is one, but since twitterific doesn't get "pushed" updates it's usually useless to find out a song I like came on and finished already)
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4-05-2008 @ 2:43PM
Big John said...
That's not really what Twitter is for. It's conversation based, a micro-blog. Not for that sort of thing.
4-05-2008 @ 2:43PM
Big John said...
Really, really defeats the purpose of Twitter. I don't follow Download Squad on Twitter because it's essentially an RSS feed shoved into Twitter. Twitzer seems to do the same.
Reply
4-06-2008 @ 2:21AM
Tom said...
You responded to me so I'll respond to you: I know that's what all these silly blogs are doing, I was making fun of it in my post.