Twitter’s selling point is its 140-character limit – this is a social network that rewards brevity.

Somewhat against the odds then, has been the rise of threads: a user replying to their own tweets in sequence to make a longer argument.

140-characters? Pah! Some threads go to 100 tweets, like this much-retweeted argument for why Rachel should have ended up with Joey in Friends.

1/ In Defense of Rachel and Joey: A Thread

— Skaiplana 🍁🍂🍁 (@kaneandgriffin) August 8, 2017

Each tweet stands alone but the conversation is threaded so people can follow from the start.

Except because it’s not what Twitter was designed for, following the entire conversation isn’t really that easy.

Now there’s something new. Thread Reader.

I tried to make a GIF that explain @tttthreads
Do you understand it?
RT => yes / Like => no / Reply for critics
Thank you for your help :) pic.twitter.com/RB7pDNp722

— Thread Reader (@threadreaderapp) August 31, 2017

Find the first tweet in an interesting thread and by mentioning clever bot @tttthreads the whole thing is condensed into one easy-to-read format.

Here’s the Friends thread that was so popular in an unrolled format.

And it works for image-laden threads like one from the CIA about training puppies.

To unroll, simply reply to the first tweet with “@tttthreads unroll” and a link is served up to the Thread Reader site.

Recent unrolled Twitter stories cover topics from American politics, Apple’s keynote speech, Brexit and Game Of Thrones to this one on Saturn, the Nasa Cassini mission and dinosaurs (well worth a read).

The bot is getting a lot of love from its fans and it’s in early days. It only started unrolling threads in August.

Struggle with reading long Twitter threads? This is genius https://t.co/WhcKBBORDr @tttthreads

— David Stevenson (@vidstevenson) September 13, 2017