@mentions, truncation, character limits etc.

[escarp]

Hi.

We feel compelled to briefly explain what we at escarp do. escarp is a
review of brief poetry and prose distributed through Twitter. On our
site (http://escarp.org) we use the API to show the most recent
pieces, as well as handle comments and news.

To distribute an author's bio, many Twitter reviews use a 2nd status
with some sort of tag ([BIO]) to indicate this information. We elected
to experiment with leaving control of this functionality in the
author's hands by using @mentions and creating a script which compiles
an author's bio from their Twitter profile. (http://escarp.org/
writers.php).

Positive byproducts of this process for the Twitter service include
requiring our writers to create a Twitter account to send submissions
(most other publications accept submissions via email, as they need to
also gather biographicals,) and a reduction in the number of text-
messages sent. Even on Twitter itself, the @mention is an intuitive
way to attribute the creative work, when the bio has been filled out.

***The problem, however, is in status truncation, and the lack of an
API response to indicate usernames a status mentions. In response, we
would be forced to either:
1.) reduce the character limit of our submissions
2.) create a script which loads the full status page to scrape the
remaining information, or
3.) move the @mention to the front of the message.

All of these, we feel, are less than ideal:
- Dropping our character limit to include the @mention reduces the
expressive potential of the medium, and reduces the brand
identification with Twitter when we say our character limit is 140
(which, by proxy, kills the association of identifying ourselves as a
140-character journal when and if we're able to publish print
anthologies, nominate pieces we've accepted for awards, or execute
promotional efforts.) It also requires us to count characters in every
submission.

- Scraping the status information wastes your resources and ours.

- Moving the @mention up just forces the truncation of the creative
part of the message, making text-message distribution pointless.

According to the link below, statuses longer than 140 characters will
be disabled at some point in the future:
http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/detail?id=133

For the reasons listed above, we'd like to appeal the terminal fate of
20 additional characters, out to text-message length (we edit the
journal by phone) and request a resource-friendly method of making use
of this information on the web.

To further justify this cause, we were the first account followed by a
number of our followers, many of whom are studying or practicing poets
and fiction writers over the age of 20. Many of these people initially
perceive Twitter as vapid and pointless. In our own promotional
efforts, we at escarp work hard to convince writers and readers of the
merits of Twitter; in our editorial efforts, we're working hard (it
will be a long journey) to cultivate a Twitter-based journal worth
mentioning in the same breath as storied, traditional print and
electronic literary publications.

Thanks for your time, thoughts and consideration,
The editorial "we"