Big changes are coming to Twitter, specifically those affecting the character count of user tweets.
Twitter, as you probably know, has limited user tweets to no more than 140 characters. This is why many users refer to the platform as a “micro-blogging network.” But there’s been a growing push to expand the character limit of user tweets in recent months.
While Twitter has yet to confirm plans to change the character count of user tweets, the blue bird revealed a new change to the format of user tweets. In the upcoming months, Twitter will be rolling out a new update that devalues usernames, quotes and file names from the standard 140 character count of user tweets. In other words, usernames, quotes and file names will no longer count towards the 140 character limit. This isn’t technically changing the character limit of tweets, but it will still allow users to publish more content in their tweets.
As explained on its blog, Twitter has evolved over the past ten years to become a “rich canvas” for creative expression. It has even introduced several new features, including community polls, the ability for users to react with GIFs, and Periscope broadcasts in tweets. All of these features have undoubtedly had a positive impact on Twitter, but there’s still a need for more tweet space, which is why Twitter has decided to make these changes.
The problem with making replies to other users on Twitter is that each @name reply counts towards the 140 character limit. So if you are replying to a user with a longer username, it can easily take up a significant chunk of your available character count. Once Twitter finishes rolling out this new change, however, neither usernames nor media attachments will count towards the 140 character limit.
“These updates will be available over the coming months. Today, we’re notifying you and our developers, so that everything works as it should when we roll these changes out. The updates have a significant impact on Tweets, so we want to provide our developer partners with time to make any needed updates to the hundreds of thousands of products built using Twitter’s API,” wrote Todd Sherman, Twitter’s Senior Product Manager, in a blog post announcing the update.
That’s not the only change coming to Twitter, though. Sherman also hinted towards another set of changes to improve the utility of existing features while also enabling new features, all without compromising the integrity of Twitter. It’s unclear what exactly this means, but it’s safe to assume that new changes will appear on Twitter. So, check back with our blog for all of the latest news surrounding Twitter and other social media networks.
What do you think of Twitter’s new format?
