Isiah Whitlock Jr christens Twitter's new 280-character limit with one for The Wire fans

This was only going to go one way

Whitlock Jr. as Senator Clayton 'Clay' Davis in The Wire (HBO)

The world has wasted no time in finding inventive and silly uses for Twitter's new 280-character limit, rolled out globally today.

But the winning tweet came from actor Isiah Whitlock Jr., who is known for keeping his The Wire catchphrase alive on Twitter years and years after the HBO show finished.

"#280characters?" he wrote.

"Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-it!"

Senator Clayton 'Clay' Davis's indulgent employment of the expletive has persisted as a meme, the apotheosis coming with this autotuned version of the catchphrase:

Donald Trump wrote his first 280-character tweet today, meanwhile, announcing his speech at the National Assembly in South Korea.

Twitter, which has 330 million monthly active users, is increasing the limit from 140 characters for languages where "cramming" is an issue (all except Japanese, Korean and Chinese).

It’s a huge change for the site, and Twitter said the move should also help users gain more followers and engage more with others.

After the site expanded its limit to 280 characters for a small group of users in September, it found that only 1 per cent of their tweets reached the new limit.

“Since we saw tweets hit the character limit less often, we believe people spent less time editing their tweets in the composer,” said Twitter project manager Aliza Rosen.

“This shows that more space makes it easier for people to fit thoughts in a tweet, so they could say what they want to say, and send tweets faster than before.”