Facebook announced in November that its users would be able to share status updates up to 63,206 characters long. That’s a little harder to visualize than Twitter’s 140-character limit.If you’re curious how Facebook arrived at this seemingly random number, Facebook engineer Bob Baldwin explained to ZDnet, “I set the exact limit to something nerdy. Facebook … Face Boo K … hex(FACE) – K … 64206 – 1000 = 63206.” In other words, Baldwin calculated the number using the hexadecimal numeral system: The hexadecimal value of “FACE” is 64,206. Then, Baldwin subtracted “K,” or “kilo-” (the prefix for 1,000), to arrive at 63,206
Facebook announced in November that its users would be able to share status updates up to 63,206 characters long. That’s a little harder to visualize than Twitter’s 140-character limit.If you’re curious how Facebook arrived at this seemingly random number, Facebook engineer Bob Baldwin explained to ZDnet, “I set the exact limit to something nerdy. Facebook … Face Boo K … hex(FACE) – K … 64206 – 1000 = 63206.” In other words, Baldwin calculated the number using the hexadecimal numeral system: The hexadecimal value of “FACE” is 64,206. Then, Baldwin subtracted “K,” or “kilo-” (the prefix for 1,000), to arrive at 63,206
Jan 05, 2012
