Blame Jack for that.
Discussion
I think they followed the sms standard. I think I remember having heard of a feature where you could text twitter from your phone to post tweets. And then it sort of became their brand x)
Yes yes you could that’s how Twitter was back in the day.
Loved it back then.
There was no algo or follows you only got to see what the whole world posted.
The text limit should have been readied as soon as it went to web based.