Tweeps weep as 280-character tweets now real
Friday November 10 2017
Twitter has finally killed the iconic 140-character limit per tweet.
In a major change to its 11-year service, social media platform, Twitter has finally killed the iconic 140-character limit per tweet.
The official rollout on November 7 came just a month after the company announced that it was testing 280-character Tweets to help users get around the “constraints” posed by certain languages.
“Historically, nine per cent of Tweets in English hit the character limit. This reflects the challenge of fitting a thought into a Tweet, often resulting in lots of time spent editing and even at times abandoning Tweets before sending,” said Twitter product manager Aliza Rosen.
“With the expanded character count, this problem was massively reduced – that number dropped to only 1 per cent of Tweets running up against the limit.”
Over the experimental period, only five per cent of Tweets sent were longer than 140 characters, only two per cent were over 190 characters and only one per cent hit the 280-character limit. While this could be a clear indication that Twitter users are satisfied with the 140-character limit, Twitter says the test proved that giving more people room to tweet results in more engagement.
“In addition to more tweeting, people who had more room to tweet received more engagement, got more followers, and spent more time on Twitter,” the social media platform in its blog.
The 280-character limit will however not be available to those tweeting in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, as these can fit more thoughts into fewer characters.
Most Twitter users globally were disappointed.
Jonathan Kressaty @kressaty posted:
“why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why?”