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Twitter Will Extend Its 140 Character Limit On September 19th (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the more-room-for-activities dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Beginning September 19th, [Twitter] will cut down on exactly which types of content count toward the platform's 140-character limit. Media attachments (images, GIFs, videos, polls, etc.) and quoted tweets will no longer reduce the count. The extra room for text will give users more flexibility in composing their messages. Twitter first announced plans to stop counting extras like photos, videos, and user polls toward the limit back in May, but gave no firm date on when the shift would occur. A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by The Verge. The date comes from two sources familiar with the company's business, but plans for the rollout could change. Another new adjustment to the character limit is that usernames will no longer count when they're at the beginning of replies, giving users additional room for discussion. It's unclear whether all of these changes will occur simultaneously; certain content types may gradually stop counting against the character limit in stages. But the company will at least kick off the move next Monday.

19 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Proverbial by vikingpower · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As the Dutch proverb goes, "a cat in a tight corner can make odd jumps". Twitter is in a tight place, to which this move may IMHO be a witness.

    --
    Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
  2. It's about time... by geekmux · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...that a company with an online service stops acting like a cellular texting service.

    Limits are even worse to deal with when they are artificial.

    Then again, so are people.

    1. Re:It's about time... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No. No thank you. We don't need another blogging service - Twitter is unique in its tight limits and those limits do provoke some good discussion while cutting down on the meaningless waffle. I can't count the number of Medium.com posts I have read which could be summed up in a couple of sentences, and thats what Twitter excels at.

      You can still have meaningful discussions, but you do NOT get to post a wall of text and walk away - it takes effort to post a wall of tweets, during which time people may reply to individual tweets, and that is awesome.

    2. Re:It's about time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It will slowly and surely turn in to a facebook clone.

    3. Re:It's about time... by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 2

      Speak only for yourself. One of the biggest reasons I ignore Twitter is the inability to be able to write any comment minimally useful because of size limitations. It is like a conversation between brats.

      --
      Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
  3. They'd better tread lightly here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The genius of the 140 character limit is that you always finish reading a tweet before your brain has time to fully process how utterly boring and trivial the bullshit you just read was. If you give users the ability to pad out their vapid brain farts into essays that take actual time to read, people might finally start grasping what a monumental heap of pointlessness twitter really is.

  4. Growing pains by OpenSourced · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's curious how many big companies, when they reach a certain age, think that it's a good idea to take whatever make them big, and change it. It's probably the human instinctive rejection of simple inaction.

    Twitter is famous because it forces people to be concise. Tweets are cited in news outlets because they are concise and so provide the short text bite that is easy to digest by the public. Nobody is going to cite a tweet that is longer than the article.

    So basically, what they are doing is giving a step to get closer to a mailing list service. Way to go!

    --
    Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
    1. Re:Growing pains by Drethon · · Score: 2

      In my meaningless opinion, this is because Twitter made the horrible decision to sell stock. A stock company needs a continuous, profitable, growth model to survive. Sure Twitter can try to make money by advertising but I can't see how it could have gotten any bigger than it was before selling stocks. Google expanded but by diversifying as a company, not by somehow making being a search engine more profitable.

    2. Re:Growing pains by Entrope · · Score: 2

      It's almost impossible to grow to "Internet scale" through organic growth -- you won't be able to provision ahead of demand. Companies that want to be the Next Big Thing seek venture capital, and VCs want an exit strategy, which means an IPO. Google was no exception in that regard.

    3. Re:Growing pains by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      It's only stuff like links that are excluded, the message still has to be short. The headline is wrong.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:Growing pains by gfxguy · · Score: 2

      I've never heard it phrased that way, but in the consumer world most people want new for the sake of new - they buy new phones with features they don't need, faster computers to waste more cpu cycles and power while tweeting and using facebook... even food that really can't be improved, like milk and other simple products get new labeling - they sometimes even make a big deal about it right on the label itself: "New look, same great taste!" Coca Cola tried to evolve and failed, but they have to keep changing something, so they keep relabeling and rebranding things. If they can't change the product, they change the can.

      --
      Stupid sexy Flanders.
  5. All messaging services are the same by grumbel5969 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The more time goes on, the more all the messaging services are becoming the same. Even today the differences between Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Co. is already rather slim, as they are all essentially used for the same things: post text, images or video to a group of people or the public. Even that fundamental 140 character limit on Twitter is constantly worked around by posting images of text or linking to sites like Twitlonger. The only real difference is the client, some client make it really fast to post video while other focus on images and text, but all of them allow you to do essentially the exact same things under the hood.

    What we are seeing here is essentially see the slow and painful reinvention of email with broadcast functionality. I could even see that turning into an open standard in another few years, as it's rather pointless to have so many apps doing the same thing and be incompatible with each other.

    1. Re:All messaging services are the same by vikingpower · · Score: 2

      What we are seeing here is essentially see the slow and painful reinvention of email with broadcast functionality. I could even see that turning into an open standard in another few years, as it's rather pointless to have so many apps doing the same thing and be incompatible with each other.

      Dude, you got yourself a start-up idea there, do you realize that ? Contact me if you do .

      --
      Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
    2. Re:All messaging services are the same by Entrope · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

  6. Colour Change by coofercat · · Score: 4, Funny

    Other hot Social Media news:

    Twitter is planning to change their blue colour from #63aeee to #63aeed - date to be confirmed, but two sources claim it'll be October 12th.

  7. In related news by ThatsNotPudding · · Score: 2

    The gigantism trend of phones accelerates.
    Maybe that's one silver lining of prevalent obesity; it will make our phones look smaller.

  8. "For Sale: Baby shoes, Never worn." by goombah99 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "I didn't have time to write a short letter so I wrote a long one", is an old aphorism. Writing tightly and editing concisely takes skill and wit. Hemingway once wrote the shortest novel on a dare: "For Sale: Baby shoes, Never worn."

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re: "For Sale: Baby shoes, Never worn." by vikingpower · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Good point. Conciseness was / is one of Twitter USPs, so to say, and now they ditch it. Diary of an announced catastrophe, this is going to be.

      --
      Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
    2. Re: "For Sale: Baby shoes, Never worn." by hackertourist · · Score: 2

      At the same time, Twitter forces everything to be reduced to a soundbite. Something we could use less of.