Twitter Considers Boosting Tweet Length Limits as High as 10,000 Characters

[MacRumors]

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last night hinted at an incoming change to the 140-character limit for which the social network has been known over the past decade. Dorsey mentioned that the limit has "become a beautiful constraint" over the years, but the company is aware of certain workarounds its fans are going through to break away from the rule.

He points towards a possibility in the near future for the site to support full-bodied text tweets that are searchable and can be highlighted by users without a strict 140-character restriction. Back in August, Twitter removed the same limit from its private messaging system, and a month later new rumors about the possibility for the same move for traditional tweets began circling.

"At its core Twitter is public messaging. A simple way to say something, to anyone, that everyone in the world can see instantly. We've spent a lot of time observing what people are doing on Twitter, and we see them taking screenshots of text and tweeting it.

Instead, what if that text...was actually text? Text that could be searched. Text that could be highlighted. That's more utility and power. What makes Twitter, Twitter is its fast, public, live conversational nature. We will always work to to strengthen that. And by focusing on conversation and messaging, the majority of tweets will always be short and sweet and conversational!"

According to people familiar with Twitter's plans, speaking with Re/code, the project is referred to as "Beyond 140" and has a tentative launch window around the end of Q1 2016. Numbers that have been considered internally by the team range from 5,000 to 10,000 character limits, the latter of which would fall alongside the same restriction placed inside of private messages on the site.

The sources point to expandable actions for the new tweets that would keep timelines as tight and orderly as they appear with the current limit, but include an expandable prompt that would then showcase the tweet's full text when clicked. Recently, Twitter updated its site to allow full images to appear without being cut off, and changed the favoriting star to a heart.

Article Link: Twitter Considers Boosting Tweet Length Limits as High as 10,000 Characters

 

[MaulRx]

So it'll become Facebook....

 

[Elbon]

They should have done this a LONG time ago...

 

[mdridwan47]

I welcome this.

 

[jclardy]

If the design is OK then this might be alright. I don't go on twitter to read long tweets - I go there to see quick tidbits of information, and maybe save links to articles for the future. The main problem with this is that right now I don't want to read long text in the Twitter UI, not even in my favorite twitter app, tweetbot. Safari View Controller is just better suited to it because I can save the link to pocket, read it in the web formatting or use the reader view.

Also, they need a compelling argument for people to put their text on twitter - why will people want to click a twitter link to a long post rather than going to something else like medium?

 

[MacDawg]

10,000 characters isn't a tweet, its a blog post... just post a link to your blog
There have been a few times I would have liked to have had over 140, but... I either abbreviated or made 2 tweets

Can honestly say, I won't take the time to click and read a tweet that long, or even half that long

 

[springsup]

Sure, I can see the reasoning - people are circumventing the system, so what point does it serve? I still don't think it's a good idea.

The 140-character limit is still useful: it promotes people keeping their tweets short, keeping each nugget digestible. Maybe they could raise it to 500 and keep that element of the service, but if they make it 5K/10K then I think they are dead. Twitter has trouble with new users because the signal/noise ratio is so poor, and allowing all messages to be longer is basically going to mean more noise.

That said, I basically never use Twitter. Sometimes I'll be curious - I'll think somebody on there may be able to spare some tickets to a game, or something. Then I go to twitter.com (I don't log in because I can't even remember what my account details are), and I can't see anything. I can't search public tweets, I can't see what's trending, nothing. It infuriates me every time. I've gone through their very long and dragging account setup process a few times, and I won't do it again.

 

[Oman]

10,000 characters isn't a tweet, its a blog post... just post a link to your blog
There have been a few times I would have liked to have had over 140, but... I either abbreviated or made 2 tweets

Can honestly say, I won't take the time to click and read a tweet that long, or even half that long

Yep... the whole idea behind the usage of the werd tweet means short and sweet... if they make this change they should then change the company name from Twtter to Twitterings..

 

[Big Bad D]

To me, the focus of having to communicate short and sweet was an attraction and a positive unique selling point of Twitter.

 

[bigjnyc]

oh god please no!! its bad enough to have to scroll through idiots posting every random thought that pops into their mind. this would make it a blog, it would take hours to scroll through your timeline.

 

[C DM]

oh god please no!! its bad enough to have to scroll through idiots posting every random thought that pops into their mind. this would make it a blog, it would take hours to scroll through your timeline.

Considering there's specific mention of keeping things the same size in the timeline seems like that wouldn't be an issue.

 

[Waxhead138]

10,000 characters isn't a tweet, its a blog post... just post a link to your blog
There have been a few times I would have liked to have had over 140, but... I either abbreviated or made 2 tweets

Can honestly say, I won't take the time to click and read a tweet that long, or even half that long

Yeah, really, I mean....if you thought Kanye could rant before....

 

[C DM]

To me, the focus of having to communicate short and sweet was an attraction and a positive unique selling point of Twitter.

There's certainly that, but then there's plenty of tweets that are so cluttered up with all kinds of abbreviations (many almost made up on the spot) and sacrifice spacing just to fit in with the limit that more time is wafted on deciphering them than actually reading them, it's also something to consider.

 

[0098386]

If it works the same as clicking a link to view more (or to view a full image like it currently does), then I'm all for it.

"Just link to your blog"
I think they'd rather keep you on your site, and I'd rather not set up a blog to post something lengthy.

To me it sounds like they're just taking the functionality of TwitLonger and we've all happily lived with that for years. I'm looking forward to it. I just hope they add mild text formatting for those long posts.

oh god please no!! its bad enough to have to scroll through idiots posting every random thought that pops into their mind. this would make it a blog, it would take hours to scroll through your timeline.

Unfollow them? Seems simple enough to me.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

If this change is made, it won't have the huge impact many seem to think.

Facebook does this already and people pay no notice. One still has to bring you in with the first few words of a message in order to get you to read the rest. If you can't do that now and get them to click the link to read more, how do you think it'll be any different to get them to click and read more on the platform?

 

[nagromme]

Maybe people who keep their tweets short can have a special badge of honor, and you could choose to auto-block people who post a longer tweet more than once a week. Turn on the auto-block and make people re-think if they really want to turn their Twitter into a blog!

 

[Avieshek]

We'll need larger screen phones with bigger battery.
2000 word limit is asked when writing Newspaper articles

 

[rockosmodurnlif]

twitter is attempting to become a platform. Pictures, videos, makes sense text would be next.

 

[Trik]

I think this will be the beginning of the end for Twitter. Sure it'll stick around for a few more years, but when user-ship drops off slowly, and people talk about how Twitter isn't used as much, they'll look back to this point IMO.

The appeal of Twitter is how easy it is to digest. This is going to ruin it. Heck, they have tried so hard to monetize, they should just charge per character over 140, that'll keep people from abusing it.

 

[NightFox]

So get rid of the one thing that differentiates it from all the other social media platforms? Anyone who can't express themselves in 140 cha

 

[MillieWales]

We'll need larger screen phones with bigger battery.
2000 word limit is asked when writing Newspaper articles, this is one novel

5-10k characters not words, 10k would be around 1700 words, so less than he news articles you mention, not a novel.

 

[nt5672]

I've never found anything useful on Twitter. Maybe they could concentrate on making it useful instead of a novelty? or I guess now its going to be a novel instead of a novelty?

 

[12vElectronics]

I'd like a little more than 140 characters, just not 5-10K. I was thinking more like 280 and make username & hashtags not count towarads your limit.

 

[Juggernaut99]

For @ replies, it would be neat if the user's handle didn't count toward the character limit (though I guess they'd need to put some restrictions in to mitigate twitter spammers). But otherwise, I don't like this at all. Its brevity is its appeal to me.

 

[Murphintosh]

To see the difference on paper, I created a document using all lowercase W's and no spaces in 14pt helvetica with 1 inch margins. (Be kind, I'm on the spectrum)
140 characters = 3 lines.
10,000 characters = 5 1/2 Pages.