Twitter is useful for getting tipped off about stuff that's happening, but frequently that kicks off a discussion, and it's really difficult to have a meaningful discussion on twitter (even when the people involved are capable of it). The messages are too short, especially when they start getting consumed with multiple @ mentions, and it's impossible to follow the course of a discussion with the half-baked way they try to thread them.
I feel like "half-baked" is being generous. Anyone who's ever tried to follow an endless series of "View conversation", "View other replies", and "Show more" links trying to trace the start of the discussion and see all of the comments knows what I'm talking about. It's especially a treat when you have to click "Show more" a bunch of times, then have to click something else to try to see more of the discussion, then try to go back and your place is lost.
I've heard that twitter may ease the limit on message size (maybe drastically, e.g. 10k), but I'm not sure how that would wo