Longer tweets are finally here.
On Monday, Twitter began letting its users post photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and quotes of other tweets without counting against the 140-character limit. Now that these media attachments won’t reduce the character count, users can compose longer tweets. Twitter announced this change back in May, but the company did not set a date for when it would actually be rolling it out to users.
Say more about what’s happening! Rolling out now: photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets no longer count toward your 140 characters. pic.twitter.com/I9pUC0NdZC
— Twitter (@twitter) September 19, 2016
Furthermore, Twitter is testing a similar leniency when it comes to direct replies. According to The Verge, the company might not count usernames at the beginning of a tweet towards the 140-character limit, either. This would give users more room to reply back and forth, even to several users at once without the usernames taking up precious space.
Why this matters: Twitter has been flirting with removing the 140-character limit for a while. One report speculated that Twitter could expand tweets to up to 10,000 characters.
“It’s the No. 1 request we get from folks. They want to be able to say what’s on their mind and be themselves,” Twitter DM product manager Sachin Agarwal told The Verge at the time.
Twitter scaled back from that vision, however, fearing that it would take away from the platform’s identity as a short-message service. Now, it looks like Twitter is ready to slowly loosen up the 140-character limit, starting with media attachments, quote retweets, and direct replies.
Author: Oscar Raymundo, Staff Writer
Oscar writes about iOS, mobile culture and digital music. He also hosts 'The iPhone Show' from Macworld's San Francisco HQ.