Why Long Tweets Don't Work: A Thread

The ideal tweet thread is a series of self-contained statements that advance a central argument, one after the other.

It’s hard to meet this ideal, but when done well, a thread allows readers to interact separately with every statement.

Threads are also systematically favoured by the algorithm, as each subsequent tweet re-promotes the whole thread and increases its exposure on followers’ timelines.

It’s a unique genre, which focusses the author’s and the reader’s attention on every individual sub-argument.

Long tweets otoyh are just crippled blog posts. Ify Musk’s goal is adding substack functionality, then long tweets should display as article link w/ image card. When clicked, these would open a separate blog-style post with .html formatting, maybe even their own comment section.

You’d be able to highlight and retweet/quote-tweet 280-character excerpts from the twitterblog. Maybe Musk could even add substack-style monetization options, possibility to sign up for email subscriptions to designated posts, etc.

Without that, long tweets will just be crippled orphaned blog posts on the wrong platform. Reading them (beyond the first 280k displayed characters) will continue to be a drag, and an inadvisable way to post.