Iterating Short Texts

“Changing behavior is what web designers do”

Joshua Porter – Designing with Behavior In Mind

I’ve screamed blue murder at Jacob Nielsen before, but this Alertbox feature is worth reading: Twitter Iterations offers some good advice on how to make short text messages more effective by illustrating the process of editing a tweet promoting a conference.

Many people will recognize these steps as edits they themselves have been doing, whether with Twitter, text messages, or in copy for websites and software interfaces; treating text as a medium for direct information delivery and prompting action.

The lesson to learn here actually has nothing to do with ‘Twitter marketing’ per-se, but is about the process of refining text for any interface or medium which places constraints on the size or number of words that can be used and is primarily intended to provoke a response on the part of the person reading the text. Unfortunately, most social media douchebags can’t comprehend that the essential skill here is editing.