Twitter is making changes

Twitter is making a small change this week involving one of their most iconic features. Most Twitter users are familiar with the 140 character limit on tweets, but the company is expanding their rules slightly. According to this article usernames used in reply to a tweet will no longer be counted in the 140 character total. Neither will media attachments. This includes, polls, videos, photos and GIFs.
 
According to Fortune.com the change started on September 19th when they released the feature for photos, videos, polls and GIFs. All of which use to take up 23 characters. That does not seem like a lot when mentioned as a number, but when there are only 140 characters to work with it suddenly becomes a substantial increase. This change will help users say more and be less constrained when drafting a tweet.

There have been reports of more changes coming to Twitter in addition to this new feature. One report suggested that there could even be 10,000 word tweets. They would be put into a separate page and a link would be generated for use on the website. This idea was supposedly taken off the table after Twitter’s CEO received criticism for moving away from the short and sweet nature of the website’s posts.

It is interesting to learn that the 140 character limit was set because that was the limit most phone companies had on text messages. CEO Jack Dorsey says the count is a “beautiful constraint” that “inspires creativity and brevity.” And most tweets will always be short and sweet. It sounds like small changes could be made for a while as Twitter tries to grow and they will keep innovating until they find the right balance of short but innovative.


What do you think of this change? Are you excited to see more or will this take away the simplicity that you enjoy about the website? Let me know in the comments.

Comments

  1. Sierra's Sarcastic SpotSeptember 20, 2016 at 12:36 PM

    I'm a little conflicted on this one. I do not always appreciate having to make slight grammar mistakes in order to fit my thoughts into a 140 character tweet, but I do however not want to see 10,000 word tweets on my timeline. I like the nature of Twitter's very short and quick updates, but I like that they're changing some of the rules as far as inserting pictures and stuff goes.

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