JK Rowling has hit out at the social media site Twitter claiming that its lost its “unique selling point” after boosting the number of words per tweet.
The Harry Potter author took to Twitter yesterday after it doubled its character allowance for users from 140 up to 280.
52 year-old Rowling wrote: “Twitter’s destroyed its USP. The whole point, for me, was how inventive people could be within that concise framework. #Twitter280characters”
The world famous writers post – using exactly 140 characters – attracted a huge response from her fans and followers including other renowned novelists.
The Shining author Stephen King replied: “What she said.”
Former First Minister Jack McConnell responded: “Big mistake.”
Historian Dan Snow wrote: “I agree, I’m afraid. Please don’t stop though!”
While musician Boy George said: “Say’s the queen of words! Lol!”
Announcing the news through a blog post, Twitter said just 5% of tweets sent during a trial were longer than 140 characters.
“We – and many of you – were concerned that timelines may fill up with 280 character tweets, and people with the new limit would always use up the whole space,” said product manager Aliza Rosen.
“But that didn’t happen.
“People in the test got very excited about the extra space in the beginning and many tweets went way beyond 140. We expect to see some of this novelty effect spike again with this week’s launch and expect it to resume to normal behaviour soon after.”
