Could you verify this, Oh Great Unicode Experts of the Python-List?

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 2:48 AM, Michael Torrie <torriem at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 08/11/2013 11:54 PM, Gregory Ewing wrote:
>> Michael Torrie wrote:
>>> I've always wondered if the 160 character limit or whatever it is is a
>>> hard limit in their system, or if it's just a variable they could tweak
>>> if they felt like it.
>>
>> Isn't it for compatibility with SMS? Twitter could
>> probably change it, but persuading all the cell phone
>> networks to change at the same time might be rather
>> difficult.
>
> Yes I think you're correct about it being limited for SMS.
>
> However I know of no phone or network that won't let you use longer
> messages; multiple SMS packets are used and most phone paste them back
> together.  So no there's nothing that anyone needs to change to use
> longer messages if they so chose.  It's now just an arbitrary limit,
> part of the twitter culture.

It's unlikely to be changed; the limit demands brevity. 160 may be
arbitrary now, but without strong argument for another cutoff, there's
no reason to alter it.

And that's my response, in 160 characters. :)

ChrisA