Tweets Grow from 140 Characters to 7 Stories

(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) - Forget being limited to 140 characters. Now tweets are reaching seven stories.

Digital-media students at Philadelphia's Drexel University are turning the microblogging message into 36x62-foot animations that are projected onto a campus building, according to CNET.com .

Anyone using the "Social Graffiti" system can digitally send Twitter messages with @digmGraffiti to be projected onto Nesbitt Hall. University seniors Matthew Morton and Chad Porche combine the messages with their own high-definition animations and project them using a projector located on the fourth floor of a building across the street.

Gizmo Watch said the animations are projected from about 180 feet away.

The messages must not contain profanity or other words or phrases that trigger a third-party filtering system.

Other than that, Porche told CNET that they want to "let anyone and everyone participate to promote an open forum and freedom of speech."

"One of our goals in this project was to bring the Drexel community together, and keeping this system open to the public helps us achieve that," he said.

According to CNET, the students developed the custom-made Twitter application using the open-source Twitter API. Their senior project is meant to combine architecture, design and technology while exploring the reach of social networking.

The project also involved Cara Schroeder, Burak Ozmucar, Kurt Gawinowicz and Kerry Russo.

Gizmo Watch praised the students for suggesting that their creation can be used to make university announcements, communicate with fellow students and update campus news.