Longer tweets are coming to Twitter on September 19th

Scorpus

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Twitter is finally about to upgrade their signature 140 character limit to make it more user friendly. Starting from September 19th, the service will no longer count a number of items in the character limit, according to information from The Verge.

The changes will see media attachments – including images, GIFs, polls, videos and more – removed from the character limit. This will allow users to post an image alongside a full 140 characters. Usernames will also no longer count towards the limit, which Twitter says will make it easier to message many users at once without "penny-pinching your words."

The plans to loosen the character limit have been in the works since May, however when Twitter first announced the changes, the company didn't specify when they'd be implemented. Even now, the company is keeping quiet on upcoming improvements to the service, although The Verge's information on the character limit comes from "two sources familiar with the company's business."

Twitter has considered increasing the character limit well beyond 140, which would have allowed users to post full-blown essays on the service, however it appears as though the company has wound back these plans in recent months. Hopefully Twitter resists the urge to increase the limit significantly, as part of the charm of Twitter is its short, snappy messages.

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Yeah, make it 141, 'cos it is such a big deal in this day and age, and then f. tweet about it, for a year, till it becomes 142. This way you can stay in business for a long time...

When people used to read papers, they were saying the news isn't worth the paper it is printed on. I'm not sure how this translates into today's language, but you get the idea...
 
Gab et. al. will destroy them. It was a good run, but they cooked the goose.
 
I think names , hashtags , video and pics should not be part from the 140 characters, but there should be max number on each. e.g. max 3 hashtags + max 3 names + one pic or video.
 
I've often thought that I would like to do Twitter, because it dispenses entirely with the formality of an essay structure -- that's really what makes the messages brief. But there's practically no meaningful thought that I could express in 140 characters or less. That limit renders the entire platform shallow and stupid. Eliminate entirely the 140 character limit. People will still tweet thoughts rather than essays, and the whole thing will be much improved.
 
I've often thought that I would like to do Twitter, because it dispenses entirely with the formality of an essay structure -- that's really what makes the messages brief. But there's practically no meaningful thought that I could express in 140 characters or less. That limit renders the entire platform shallow and stupid. Eliminate entirely the 140 character limit. People will still tweet thoughts rather than essays, and the whole thing will be much improved.

They say brevity is the soul of wit. I'm not saying this, of course, but many people have said it.
 
I read about this months ago and have been wondering where in the hell it was.

Why did it take so long to roll out if it was already working on some proprietary platform all this time?
 
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