Accessible version of A screenshot-tweet by Twitter's Jack Dorsey from 5 January 2016
At its core Twitter is public messaging. A simple way to say something, to anyone, that everyone in the world can see instantly.
We didn't start Twitter with a 140 character restriction. We added that early on to fit into a single SMS message (160 characters).
It's become a beautiful constraint, and I love it! It inspires creativity and brevity. And a sense of speed. We will never lose that feeling.
We've spent a lot of time observing what people are doing on Twitter, and we see them taking screenshots of text and tweeting it.