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Twitter Officially Removes 140-Character Limit From Direct Messages

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Twitter today announced a major change to the way Direct Messages work on the Twitter platform, removing the 140-character limit that restricted the length of private messages. With the change, Twitter's Direct Message feature is on par with other chat and messaging apps, allowing for unrestricted conversation.

Twitter first announced its plan to remove the 140-character limit from Direct Messages in June, but the change began rolling out to users around the world today and will continue to become available to users over the next few weeks. The 140-character limit has been removed across the Twitter platform, which encompasses the Twitter app for iOS, the Twitter app for Android, Twitter.com, TweetDeck, and Twitter for Mac.
While Twitter is largely a public experience, Direct Messages let you have private conversations about the memes, news, movements, and events that unfold on Twitter. Each of the hundreds of millions of Tweets sent across Twitter every day is an opportunity for you to spark a conversation about what's happening in your world. That's why we've made a number of changes to Direct Messages over the last few months. Today's change is another big step towards making the private side of Twitter even more powerful and fun.
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There are no plans to remove the limit from the public side of Twitter, so tweets will continue to be restricted to 140 characters. To get access to Direct Messages that have no character limits, Twitter advises users to upgrade to the latest version of the company's apps.

Twitter for iOS can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Twitter for Mac can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for free. [Direct Link]

TweetDeck can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Article Link: Twitter Officially Removes 140-Character Limit From Direct Messages
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/08/12/twitter-direct-messages-no-character-limit/
I wonder how long it will take Tweetbot to update their app to support this (not that I DM anyone on Twitter anyway).
 
Twitter started out as a service to broadcast status messages only, hence the limit; since that's no longer true, there's little reason to adhere so strictly to the original model--though odd the only thing that makes the social network distinctive is its limitations, but they've grown so popular that it's not that important anymore to be distinctive in any way.
 
sss4r said:
Twitter started out as a service to broadcast status messages only, hence the limit; since that's no longer true, there's little reason to adhere so strictly to the original model--though odd the only thing that makes the social network distinctive is its limitations, but they've grown so popular that it's not that important anymore to be distinctive in any way.
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There's more to Twitter than that, and it makes the limitations still useful in various ways.
 
Thank god! People* have been waiting breathlessly for a service that would allow two people to have a private online conversation without character limits.


*People who have never heard of SMS, iMessage, blackberry messenger, what's app, Facebook messenger, snapchat, or... wait for it... email.
 
Tweets are too short. It makes using Twitter annoying. The fact that they could ever limit direct messages to that boggles my mind though. Same with snapchat... They go to all that hassle to implement money transfer and video chatting but the features are so over "simplified" that they become a hassle to use.
 
C DM said:
So that it will just become some sort of blog/Facebook type of thing? The whole point of it is that it's not that.
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The whole point of Twitter is that it isn't Facebook or a blog?

... that actually kind of sums up the pointlessness of Twitter nicely.
 
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darcyf said:
The whole point of Twitter is that it isn't Facebook or a blog?

... that actually kind of sums up the pointlessness of Twitter nicely.
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The whole point of how it presents information, as that was the context of the reply.

That said, the pointlessness of the presentation or the service itself might certainly apply to some people, just like various people find all kinds of things pointless, while others find them useful for various reasons. Making things essentially the same as other things doesn't really help much.
 
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The weird thing about the 140 character limit is that the amount of information you can fit in depends on which language and writing system you use. For instance Chinese tweets can be far more detailed than English ones.
 
Just updated, but I'm still presented with the 140 character limit? Also, the text in the Tweet compose window is randomly huge now.
 
APlotdevice said:
The weird thing about the 140 character limit is that the amount of information you can fit in depends on which language and writing system you use. For instance Chinese tweets can be far more detailed than English ones.
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Also depends on writing skills. Some must learn brevity: expanded vocabulary, elimination of redundant words and meaningless prepositions. One phrase I've noticed lately is "high rate of speed" as though they haven't heard the word velocity before.
 
jsmith189 said:
Just updated, but I'm still presented with the 140 character limit? Also, the text in the Tweet compose window is randomly huge now.
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Are you talking about the DM character limit or a general character limit for just tweeting something?
 
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