This Twitter look-alike requires 1,400 characters

Sometimes it's hard to know why people do things. But it's easy to see why some creative minds have come up with Woofer.

This is a site whose look bears a remarkable resemblance to Twitter--right down to its pale-blue colors. But its conceit is to create an entirely new form of blogging: "macroblogging." You see, Woofer requires every post to have a minimum of 1,400 characters. Yes, minimum. This, of course, contrasts with Twitter's "microblogging" platform, which limits users to 140 characters per tweet.

This means that finally, the world has a site that devotes itself to the full, deep gamut of people's literary skills.

Let us bark for a literary future.

(Credit: CC Alpharios101/Flickr)

Naturally, it is hard to quote a woof in full. However, woofs seem to vary between disquisitions on Twitter, such as this from the culturally monikered Sendafart, to this peculiar effort, consisting of the word "aaaaaaaaaaaaa" and purporting to come from the quill of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Woofer has a clear link explaining in almost 1,400 characters that it is not affiliated with Twitter. The link reads: "Is this Twitter?" Click on it, and you see, in very large type, "No," coupled with a link to the site's legal notice.

However, some have complained that once they create a woof, the site somehow manages to post their real Twitter profile picture.

Woofer is run by a concern called Join the Company, an organization that claims to "build entertaining Web sites that change the way people use the Internet."

When you look at the site's three principles of woofing, you begin to believe that Woofer truly will be the salvation of the language: "1. Be eloquent. 2. Use adverbs. 3. DEA (don't ever abbreviate)," the site says.

I dream of a world of macrobloggers who write in full, who never use acronyms, and who create an online oasis for complete literary expression in a world of dogs eating dogs and merely offering sound bites. But let's see how long it takes before Woofer gets caught in a flock of terse legal complaints.

[EvanSei]

We will see if this catches on, and more importantly if twitter doesn't shut them down (law suits) if this site does make it I might just use it because sometimes you can't fit all you want to say into a tweet and I do not like sites such as myspace or facebook odd I know.

[slickuser]

someone will next come up with "woofwoof.com" that supports 14000 chars?

what a creative people!!

[dowell100]

Watch this space, Matyszczyk ia going to soon break the big story about a site that requires you to input exactly 630 characters.... that's 1400 characters - 140 characters / 2. He's going after the Pulitzer!

[stubbyns]

Surely there is service that is between these two antipodes. 140 is ridiculously short and 1,400 is too long, you might as well blog!

[lordmorgul]

Yes, it is called Blogger, or any other standard blog.

[rembrandt44]

"macroblogging"? Please...People just always try to come up with new pithy catch phrases. It's just regular blogging. 1400 characters isn't that long; this blog post is over 2300 characters. Just Chris Matyszczyk's tag line is 274 characters... his name alone is 16, more than 1% of the minimum. If you add up the characters in the headline, by line and tag line you get 342 characters (almost 25%) and that's without saying anything. I agree that reading more eloquent, thoughtful and developed posts is a worthwhile goal, but is the word blogging so behind the times that we need a new name for it? If so, then I say let's return to the old days when bloggers blogged and nobody counted how many keys you hit. (This comment has 746 characters)

[noesnoesnoes]

Some gems might come out of this site. Maybe it will be a platform for poeple to write mini-stories. It will probably end up being as drivel-based as Twitter, though.

[bigton09]

this woofer won't work because ppl are lazy

[lixingchen]

It wont work because it is just stupid. You have tons of people out there willing to type their buttocks off...

Is this supposed to send this to your phone? Failed.

I would smack somebody for sending that much non-sense to read!

[bvdon]

Twitter is a fad... people will get tired of the short bursts of info.

[lixingchen]

Don't underestimate the bored!

[baconstang]

Oh boy! Ten times as lame.

[pw1y]

luciffer is a site where you can blog about evil in 666 characters
waynner: Gretzky in 99 characters
pure genius

[Questioning77]

I have a question. How many people actually HAVE 1,400 characters for texting on their phone? If this is the "minimum " and usually this means it CANNOT be shorter, wouldn't this be limiting the users? Truth to be told, My mom and I only have 160 characters per text in all. At least Twitter is a bit reasonable with their texting limits. Yes there are times that I wish I could use all my 160 characters when I tweet, but it make more sense then this number... UNLESS cell phone companies are creating phones which can make it work that like. I do not know, and if you happen to know this, please let me know.

[lordmorgul]

It is not your phone that limits the text to 160 characters, it is the technology being used to deliver the SMS message (that is what a 'text' actually is). The telephone companies are who limited it.

Phones with internet data service plans could post to woofer of course. The service could also let you 'build up' a post by sending multiple text messages that get added together (maybe one paragraph per message or something). There are workarounds for your problem they just need to think about it awhile.

[withoutme]

I guess neither the author of this article or the dimwits who post there comments here took the time to check out the site. From there Legal Notice
"We are in no way associated with the website Twitter.com. This is a website for parody purposes only. Twitter neither endorses nor is affiliated with this website or company in any way.
We are huge fans of Twitter, and think it's an amazing concept."
PARODY!

[Philips]

LOL

But I actually liked their http://unluckytime.com/ better :)

[hatmon]

If this is as easy to use as Twitter I reckon it could be successful. regular blogging sites are like SLRs. there is too much information. I could never be bothered to work out the intricacies of word press so I hardly ever used it. I like the sound of woofer though. It needs to have some kind of advertising thing on it like you tube to really pique peoples interest though.

[lixingchen]

This obviously calls for the Meower site which will tend to the needs of those wishing to be in the range of 140 and 1,400 characters.

[Harrison912]

Very interesting. I use Twitter mainly to socially market my safety and security web site so this may be another avenue for marketing as well. Thanks, Chris.