Now that Twitter has made its final decision, that it will be sticking strictly to the 140-character limit, a new chance has opened for others to offer similar service offering messages with longer length

Yes. It's called Facebook.

Twitter has always been a solution in search of a problem. With the 140 character limit its impossible to conduct any meaningful communication. Without the limit, its no different than the gazillion other places where people can post their self-important, mindless drivel that nobody give two shits about

Traditionally writers put a space before an opening bracket (like this), but I'm seeing a lot of Slashdot contributors scrunch up the bracket against the last word(like this). Also there are people who don't write the spaces in "a lot" or "at least", and other similar phrases. I wonder if this War on White Space is partly down to Twitter and its character limit.

I've mixed feelings over social media in general, but Twitter in the specific makes my blood boil.

It's a medium that seems designed to kill off nuance, civility and sophistication of thought. By forcing people into 140 characters and providing social incentives for them to use those 140 characters to say something that will be shared as widely as possible, it encourages them to make the crassest, most polarizing statements possible. I'd put Twitter as the number one reason that so many online debates these days devolve into bitter mud-slinging between the loudest fringes of two opposing echo-chambers.

The rapid-response culture of twitter just makes things worse. Combined with the anonymity of online interactions, it compels people to speak before they've had a chance to do a sense-check and think through the consequences. There's no shortage of examples of responsible individuals in major corporations who have thrown away careers because they got sucked into the vortex that Twitter creates. One example, former Microsoft director Adam Orth and the "deal with it" furore over the planned always-online functionality for the Xbox One [eurogamer.net]. Now, you could argue that in this case, Twitter did us a service by providing him with a platform to air his (or the company's) "true feeling". I'm not necessarily sure that's the right response, though. I strongly suspect pretty much everybody has "true feelings" which are pretty appalling at times (I know I do) and a huge part of social interaction is toning those things down before they can fly from your mouth (or indeed, stopping them altogether). Twitter, by design, takes the brakes off.

Some people can be incredibly witty and lucid within a single sentence. You see those in the occasional +5 Funny or +5 Insightful post on slashdot. Those people are a minority (and most of them struggle to manage it consistently). Most one-line posts are badly written crap (and usually from ACs). Twitter just institutionalizes that, except with less anonymity.

That Jack said 140 characters is staying, I'm wondering might be one of those Steve Jobsian deft maneuvers where you say what people are listening for, but aren't actually saying what you're planning (and thus don't actually ANSWER the question).

I'd not mind Twitter to stick to 140 characters for tweets as they appear in the Feed. In fact, I tweeted Jack my suggestion:- 140 characters Tweets would stay. You could continue to tweet 140 characters at a time, OR the 140 character tweet could also be a Summary