Credit: https://www.forbes.com/profile/jack-dorsey/
Twitter is on the verge of ditching one of its age-long policy of limiting tweets to 140 characters. According to Recode and other tech blogs, the microblogging website is doubling its character length from 140 to 280 per post.
Obviously Twitter wants to encourage people to post more tweets—and expanding its character limit could be the way out. However, only a small group of users have access to the test—and the possibility of it getting the nod after the test is high considering how users clamored for this change before now.
Last March, Twitter announced that @username will no longer count towards your tweet’s 140-character limit. That in itself was one of the early signs that the social media giant was edging towards getting rid of its old ways. In a blog post announcing that change, Product Manager, Sasank Reddy said:
“Remember how we told you we were working on ways to let you to express more with 140 characters? Since then, we’ve introduced two updates, and today we’re rolling out another. Now, when you reply to someone or a group, those @usernames won’t count toward your Tweet’s 140 characters.
“It’s now easier to follow a conversation, so you can focus on what a discussion is about, and who is having it. Also, with all 140 characters for your replies, you have more room to participate in group conversations.”
That change affected both the web and mobile versions of Twitter. That new interface freed up more characters for you to express your thoughts and feelings on the microblogging platform.
That change according to the company, was in response to various calls and feedbacks it got from users who have been clamoring for changes to its 140-character limit. Reddy said the feedbacks showed that people engaged in more conversation on its platform more than ever. This is true especially when you consider the fact that more room was provided for people to express their thoughts and views.
Back in May 2016, Twitter bowed to popular demands when it officially announced that media attachments and @names in replies would no longer count toward your 140 allowed characters.
Twitter users—old and new are particularly frustrated at some of the unclear rules surrounding how they compose and send tweets. The microblogging company is determined to make using the service worth the while and more interesting.
Product Manager Aliza Rosen in a blog post on Tuesday, said:
“We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, so we’re doing something new: we’re going to try out a longer limit, 280 characters, in languages impacted by cramming (which is all except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean).”
This is just a test for now, and a global rollout could depend on the success of the data collected by Twitter during this period. However, users in Japan China and Korea won’t be getting additional character owing to the fact that languages, like Japanese already convey more words in fewer number of characters.
