How constraints can help:
There are a good number of discussions about why Twitter limits users to 140 characters. Twitter was created to make a mobile-friendly messaging system. Thus, as a result of the 160 character text limit imposed by SMS, Twitter determined that limiting their posts to 140 characters would be a good way to ensure that the post’s author could have up to 20 characters left for their name.

What this character limit ended up doing was ensuring that those who published kept their messages short and concise. In doing so, Twitter unleashed panic among those who had big messages to share, and thereby encouraged a level of higher thinking that resulted in succinct posts. Biz cited two great examples to illustrate his point of how:

“constraint can inspire creativity:”

1. When Steve Spielberg originally thought about the movie JAWS he wanted the audience to see inside the live shark’s mouth. However because of the danger level, Spielberg was forced to rethink his approach and then created the famed shark attack from the perspective of the shark.
2. Conan O’Brien’s Twitter team recently said that because of the text limit, they find that their jokes end up being more to the point and thereby funnier and appreciated more by the public.

The concept of innovation being driven by constraints is a somewhat unheralded dynamic. Nice to see these examples from Twitter's co-founders, Ev Williams and Biz Stone.