Twitter’s New Medium – Long-Form Content?  

Forget 280 characters. Twitter is testing a new length limit (checks Notes) of up to 2,500 words. With Twitter Notes, people can write and share articles with rich formatting, graphics, and embeds. Sounds a little like Medium (started by a Twitter co-founder) and Substack, doesn’t it? Robert Rose explores what’s behind this new feature, who stands to gain, and who may lose out. (Oh, and he talks about Cannes, too). 

Watch the episode 

Aired: June 24, 2022 

Read the transcript 

Hello everybody, Robert Rose here with what’s new and what’s important in the world of content marketing.  

And for the best in best practices – you can always go to contentmarketinginstitute.com 

Two quick items in the news this week:  

First, if you’re watching this, you’re probably not in the South of France, soaking up great wines, great sun, and great beach time. 

That’s right, the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity – the awards program that showcases marketing and advertising awesomeness – is finally back this week after being canceled the last two years because of the pandemic.  

There will be plenty of interesting work in the showcase. One of the most exciting aspects is that there will be a new B2B-focused award this year. The Creative B2B Lions is an official jury award (the winners may have been announced as we speak) and will recognize 11 entrants across marketing disciplines such as cross-channel storytelling, brand experience, innovative content, and others  

Our take: It’s been a long time coming – and I’m excited to see how far B2B creative content and marketing have come. 

The Creative B2B Lion has been a long time coming – and shows how far B2B creative #Content has come, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

In other news, Twitter has officially rolled out its long-form content Notes feature. 

The company announced that it has begun testing Notes – an interface that may replace Twitter threads as a way to write and publish long-form content on the social media platform. The company notes that a small group of writers in the US, Canada, Ghana, and the United Kingdom now have access to Notes as part of an initial testing phase. 

Notes users will have a new “Write” tab. That’s where you’ll eventually create and access all of your Notes. A Notes tab in your profile will hold your published work so followers can find their long-form content. 

What could possibly go wrong? 

The new Notes feature apparently will give users some WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) features for rich formatting and even uploading media – which can, of course, be tweeted and shared with followers on publishing. 

Our take: Is it time to kill that Medium account? Medium is a publishing platform developed by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams for exactly this kind of purpose.  

Now that @Twitter announced Notes, is it time to kill that old Medium account? @Robert_Rose via @CMICotent. Click To Tweet

Twitter noted that newsletters might be next. Could the company be angling to get into a Substack-like business? 

One thing is for sure: This development has the potential to upend the way people use Twitter. No more Twitter threads. Instead, just tweets that point to long-form content. 

The real question is: What does that end up doing to the feed? Will we end up with people looking to game the system and creating multiple tweets pointing to their long-form content? And what are the implications for building an audience and following there? 

 For now, it’s a lot of “Let’s wait and see.” But it’s a bold move from a company that could use a bold move right about now.

No word yet on what Elon Musk thinks about the new feature. Who knows, maybe he’ll write a Note about it. 

Related: The Great (?) Twitter Takeover 

 And that’s five minutes of the news you need to lead in content marketing. I’m Robert Rose. Remember, it’s your story. Tell it well. I’ll see you next week.