Twitter Testing Expanded 280 Character Limit for Tweets

[MacRumors]

Twitter today announced that it is going to "try out" a longer character limit, doubling the current 140-character limit to 280 characters.

The 280 character limit is going to be available in languages that are "impacted by cramming," aka all languages aside from Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

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

According to Twitter, most tweets in English have 34 characters while most tweets in Japanese have 15 characters, and Twitter users tweeting in English hit the 140-character limit more often, which can be a "major cause of frustration."

Twitter says the new character limit is "only available to a small group" of users at the current time as it gathers data and feedback on the impact of the change. It won't roll out to all users until Twitter is sure that it "works" for the Twitter community, but Twitter is hoping 280 characters will "make it easier for everyone to Tweet."

We understand since many of you have been Tweeting for years, there may be an emotional attachment to 140 characters - we felt it, too. But we tried this, saw the power of what it will do, and fell in love with this new, still brief, constraint. We are excited to share this today, and we will keep you posted about what we see and what comes next.

Twitter has had a 140-character limit in place since the service first launched in 2006, so a character expansion is a major change to the way Twitter works.

Originally, our constraint was 160 (limit of a text) minus username. But we noticed @biz got 1 more than @jack. For fairness, we chose 140. Now texts are unlimited. Also, we realize that 140 isn't fair--there are differences between languages. We're testing the limits. Hello 280! - Biz Stone (@biz) September 26, 2017

Before considering a character limit expansion, Twitter made several other changes to give users more room to share their thoughts. Starting in 2016, photo attachments, GIFs, polls, and other media stopped counting towards the 140-character limit, and in March, usernames no longer counted towards the limit.

Users randomly selected to be part of Twitter's beta testing group will be able to use 280 characters in their tweets starting today.

Article Link: Twitter Testing Expanded 280 Character Limit for Tweets

 

[farewelwilliams]

Everyone: "We want X!"
Twitter: "You get Y!"

 

[filmantopia]

Doubt it. The technology for 280 characters just isn't there yet.

 

[thegarden]

Double Trumple

 

[D.T.]

I don't want to get all PRSI-ish, but, please, no ...

 

[shyam09]

Not that it would change anything. Idiotic and brainless twitter warriors will still post 5 part essay tweets expressing how offended they are by something.

 

[Kaibelf]

Great, we get special double episodes of As the White House Turns.

 

[LinusR]

Can someone tell me how this will be different from posting long texts on Facebook? Isn't this diluting the idea of Twitter? (Disclaimer: I don't use either service)

 

[iLoveDeveloping]

Am I the only one that wants this? Reading all the comments online in the last few minutes everyone is so pissed. Why? I've wanted this for years! It's not going to change your life - like I dunno, a slower iPhone that has less battery life if you needed it in an emergency? No you just say oh it's indexing it's ok, I still love Apple. Oh no.. tweets, that's something to get pissed about.. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Kaibelf]

Can someone tell me how this will be different from posting long texts on Facebook? Isn't this diluting the idea of Twitter? (Disclaimer: I don't use either service)

At this point I really struggle to see a point to Twitter at all. It seems to be mainly a platform for drive by attacks on people, marketing/corporate plugs, and quick referrals to more content over on Instagram.

 

[MacNut]

At this point I really struggle to see a point to Twitter at all. It seems to be mainly a platform for drive by attacks on people, marketing/corporate plugs, and quick referrals to more content over on Instagram.

Twitter is what you make of it. It’s great for breaking news and one liners.

 

[Sharkoneau]

Why not just boost the character count to 210? Doubling it sounds like a massive change. Whenever I exceed the 140, it typically is by a handful of characters; this change seems too dramatic.

 

[C DM]

At this point I really struggle to see a point to Twitter at all. It seems to be mainly a platform for drive by attacks on people, marketing/corporate plugs, and quick referrals to more content over on Instagram.

Kind of like email seems to be mostly a platform for letting people know how they can claim some part of some far away inheritance money that was secretly obtained by someone, purchasing pharmaceuticals without prescriptions, and finding single people who are up for anything.
[doublepost=1506461938][/doublepost]

Why not just boost the character count to 210? Doubling it sounds like a massive change. Whenever I exceed the 140, it typically is by a handful of characters; this change seems too dramatic.

Seems like the reasoning mostly has to do with various languages other than English, and the whole part about being over by a handful characters likely wouldn't really be as applicable.

 

[jdillings]

What a time to be alive!

 

[5105973]

My morning covfefe will now be supersized!

 

[Urban Joe]

manufactured crisis. manufactured solution.

 

[breeeeathe]

yes.... and noo..... heheheh

 

[ipedro]

The magic of Twitter is in its brevity. It forces concise thoughts. 140 characters may be too restrictive but 280 is too long. 200 would have hit the sweet spot. The 140 limit made me a better writer.

^
200 characters

 

[nwcs]

Twitter will probably fold within a decade to sit alongside MySpace.

 

[blairh]

Twitter is driving me crazy. I can’t mute the retweets of Bill Simmons. And now I’m seeing the likes of the people I follow in my mobile feed. Why?!?!?!?

 

[now i see it]

After all these years I still can't understand why people use Twitter. It's like a tropical forest with zillion birds chirping away worthless one liners all at the same time.

 

[jdillings]

After all these years I still can't understand why people use Twitter.

It's crack for trolls

 

[ChristianVirtual]

Reduce to 70 ... it’s enough and fit into one old DOS console line

 

[CodeSpyder]

In related news, Trump's maximum count has been reduced to 1.

 

[LordQ]

More space for ******** and bullying. Twitter is a cancerous community.