Twitter Rolls Out Expanded 280 Character Tweet Limit Worldwide

[MacRumors]

Twitter today announced that the 280 character limit for tweets that it introduced back in September is being rolled out to all Twitter users. The new 280 character limit, which doubles the existing 140-character limit, is available for all users and is being implemented for all languages where "cramming" was a problem.

Tweet with traditional 140-character limit on left, new 280-character limit on right.​

In September, we launched a test that expanded the 140 character limit so every person around the world could express themselves easily in a Tweet. Our goal was to make this possible while ensuring we keep the speed and brevity that makes Twitter, Twitter. Looking at all the data, we're excited to share we've achieved this goal and are rolling the change out to all languages where cramming was an issue.

Twitter said that it noticed people who were using Twitter in English would hit the character limit more often than tweets in languages like Chinese and Japanese, which is why the company ultimately decided to raise the character limit. The changes are rolling out to all languages except for Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.

According to Twitter's analytics, most people with access to the 280 character limit continued to share tweets that featured under 140 characters, leaving the "brevity of Twitter" intact.

Only 5 percent of tweets sent out were longer than 140 characters, and only 2 percent were longer than 190 characters, so Twitter believes the new character limit should not "substantially change" timelines for most users.

280-character tweets have been limited to a small group of users since the end of September, but the feature is rolling out to everyone starting today. When the new limit is activated, the tweet interface on the web displays a circle that gradually fills up as you type rather than a numbered countdown.

The new Twitter character limit is already available to many users who did not previously have access. Twitter warns that there may be an uptick in novelty tweets and tweets using the full character limit as the feature rolls out, but the company expects this to die down over the course of the next week or two.

Article Link: Twitter Rolls Out Expanded 280 Character Tweet Limit Worldwide

 

[scrapesleon]

Still can’t get an edit tweet button

 

[Appleaker]

A historic moment. It’s kind of fun fitting everything into 140 characters but it can also be extremely fustrating, so a welcome change, obviously. Although it was iconic. Anyway, the next step forward is to be able to edit tweets.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

The data shows most people didn't make use of the additional characters anyways. No need to get upset.

 

[rotax]

OMG! the technological prowess is amazing! The market cap must go up another few billion.

 

[petsounds]

For certain accounts like press outlets, a larger limit makes sense. But overall this will just reduce readability as people will have more words with which to say exactly the same thing.

 

[avanpelt]

Tweetbot just released an update today, but it’s still limited to 140 characters. My guess is that there will be another imminent update forthcoming.

 

[RowellE]

Updated the app but it still shows a 140-character limit. Not sure I would need or use more than 140 much, but it's good to have. Also, I don't like that they're removing the character countdown.

 

[EdT]

For certain accounts like press outlets, a larger limit makes sense. But overall this will just reduce readability as people will have more words with which to say exactly the same thing.

This thing that you are saying is simply not the true representation of how people will compose their own tweets when you remove the character limit that is currently 140 characters but will now be more characters, with the new limit being up to 280, which is twice as long as the Old limit which was 140 characters.

 

[KazKam]

280 characters is for the lazy. Personally, I enjoyed the challenge of distilling a thought to it's essence. A great exercise in efficiency, conciseness, and clarity. Really helps you weed out the verbal excrement (also, I wanted to type "verbal excrement"). I also preferred reading the shorter quips. Much more scannable and digestible IMO.

"I have already made this [tweet] too long, for which I must crave pardon, not having now time to make it shorter." -- Ben Franklin

 

[honam1021]

It's 140 words on my side (my account was registered from Hong Kong).

Twitter needs to clarify what happens if a native user of any of the excluded languages wants to make a tweet in English.

 

[now i see it]

For certain accounts like press outlets, a larger limit makes sense. But overall this will just reduce readability as people will have more words with which to say exactly the same thing.

That statement was 187 characters.

Here, I edited it for you to 140 characters:

For certain accounts like press outlets, a larger limit makes sense. But overall this will just reduce readability as people will have more

 

[Rogifan]

No Twitter no, stupid idea.

 

[fitshaced]

Twitter courage

 

[jdillings]

What a time to be alive!

 

[ipedro]

I still think that 280 is too far in the extreme direction. I think that rounding it up to 200 would have allowed most tweets just short of characters to finish their thoughts. Twitter execs said so themselves: even given the freedom, tweets rarely go over 190.

 

[ErikGrim]

Still can’t get an edit tweet button

The potential for abuse of this feature far outweighs the inconvenience of having to delete and retype a tweet. (Or copy, delete, paste, edit).

 

[ipedro]

The potential for abuse of this feature far outweighs the inconvenience of having to delete and retype a tweet. (Or copy, delete, paste, edit).

I think that abuse can be prevented by giving a tweet a time limit of a few minutes to edit, resetting any likes and retweets after editing and displaying an "edited" asterix along with a view of the edits done.

 

[nexesnex]

Ugh, I really wish they hadn't of done this... at least they could have waited several years...

 

[riverfreak]

Twitter *already* increased the allowable length by discounting URLs at the end of tweets.

This is just another example that the company is essentially directionless and doesn’t really know what it’s platform or function really is. Other examples include their inability to police bots or simply document political ads and their stagnant ad revenue.

I honestly don’t see Twitter surviving in its current incarnation for the long haul. Way too much noise. Eventually it will just be bots cross posting to get clicks on their various social media outlets. Oh wait...
[doublepost=1510113893][/doublepost]Oh, I might also add that twitter used to not allow continued tweets. Implementing that was another one of their ugly hacks reminiscent of old SMS messages stitched together. Certain people routinely rely on this which always makes me LOL.

And Twitter’s analysis is hilarious. They rationalize that most people won’t use 280 because they haven’t run up against the 140 character limit. What an asinine conclusion.

 

[riverfreak]

I think that abuse can be prevented by giving a tweet a time limit of a few minutes to edit, resetting any likes and retweets after editing and displaying an "edited" asterix along with a view of the edits done.

Adding a time limit for edits and then resetting retweets and likes simply wont work. Tweets rapidly leave the platform. And Twitter doesn’t even maintain a history of deleted tweets now, let alone revision history. They should.

 

[Gasu E.]

Congratulations, World. In a stroke, you now contain twice as much **** ****.

 

[CaTOAGU]

And Twitter’s analysis is hilarious. They rationalize that most people won’t use 280 because they haven’t run up against the 140 character limit. What an asinine conclusion.

That wasn't their reasoning at all, they allowed a subset of accounts to have 280 characters for several weeks. During that time they did quantitive analysis that showed only 5% of tweets sent by those accounts went over 140 characters and 1% went over 190 characters. That's why they think most people won't use 280 characters. However increasing the number of characters allowed alleviates a problem where 9% of all tweets in English ran up against the 140 character limit.

 

[OllyW]

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We purposely limit political, religious, or social issue discussion to the PRSI forum (https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/politics-religion-social-issues.47) since the issues are often controversial or sources of discord, and can easily interfere with discussions on other topics, especially in news threads. A number of posts from this thread have been removed for this reason.

 

[boccabella]

They should make the character-count unlimited and let the users choose the maximum number of characters they want to appear in their feed.