We heard last September that Twitter was considering dropping the 140 character limit, and now we’re hearing that the new limit may be as high as 10,000 characters.
Update: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has confirmed that they are testing the new character limit in the following tweet. In his message he explains why they’re considering the big change. Except, he didn’t exactly write his confirmation in a tweet — he wrote about it in his Notes app and posted a screenshot. Don’t you see why we need the longer tweet limit now?
— Jack (@jack) January 5, 2016
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Original story: Re/code reports that Twitter is currently testing a new version of their website in which the longer tweets “appear the same way they do now, displaying just 140 characters, with some kind of call-to-action that there is more content you can’t see. Clicking on the tweets would then expand them to reveal more content.”
Therefore your timeline would still look the same, except for “read more”-type buttons which let you read the full message.
The goal is to release the new feature within the next three months.
For fandom, this would be a pretty big deal. No longer would you have to send multiple tweets about your latest theory about how Rey and Luke may know each other — all you’d have to do is write a single tweet. This limit would also be more in line with what you can do on two of Twitter’s biggest competitors, Facebook and Tumblr.
It also relieves the general stress of trying to fit a message into 140 characters, if you’re a person who prefers to not clog up other people’s timelines with a slew of tweets with one thought.
The higher limit would obviously be a huge change for Twitter, a website that’s been defined by the small 140 character limit. The original purpose of Twitter was to be able to share and read easily-digestible content. 10,000 characters isn’t very digestible.
Re/code cautions that Twitter is still very much in the testing phase, so this limit and how the tweets are displayed may change. I think the most critical aspect of this will be figuring out how to represent the 10,000 characters in a small space. Will you be able to include a headline so people know the purpose of your entire tweet?
One thing’s for sure: Twitter is eager to grow their user base, and they think getting rid of the tight 140 character limit will help them.
Source: Re/code
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