Twitter News — New Features

Twitter Doubles its 140-Character Limit

Twitter, the world’s most popular online social networking service, began a surprise test in late September with a small group of users to see what would happen if people had more room to write. Interestingly, Twitter said that after the novelty of tweeting more characters wore off, most people in the test stopped tweeting the full length.

The company also said the people who have had access to 280-character tweets received more likes, retweets and mentions, got more followers and spent more time on Twitter as a result.

Twitter, the micro-blogging site with 330 million monthly active users, officially expanded the traditional 140-character tweet limit to 280 characters for freer expression on November 7, 2017. The new limit rolled out to users in almost all 40 languages Twitter supports except those who tweet in Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Those languages can convey twice as much information in less space, so tweets will remain at 140 characters, Twitter said.

It’s a huge change for the site, and the global community responded to the new 280-character rule positively. The remaining character limit will be displayed with a combination of visual and numeric cues. You will see a faint grey circle to denote 280 characters, instead of the pesky 140 number at the bottom right corner.

Twitter Tweets Now 280 Characters Long

Just 5 per cent of the tweets they sent were longer than 140 characters, 2 per cent went over 190 characters, and the site said its brevity remained.

Twitter announced on their ofiicial blog on November 7, 2017:

Japanese, Korean and Chinese tweets will remain at the 140-character limit, because cramming isn’t an issue in these languages, Rosen notes.

Product manager Aliza Rosen tweeted on Twitter on November 7, 2017:

Twitter also tweeted on November 7, 2017:

My First Tweet Using 280 Characters

On November 9, I tweeted about my new blog post using 280 characters. Previously with great constrain, I could just mention the title, sub-title, and link of a blog post along with an image. Now, I could give more details about the blog post along with a request to write comments.

First, I fell short by 19 characters.

More than 280 Characters Tweet

I overcame the problem with a little editing. I was happy that now I could convey to my readers what I always wanted to.

Edited 280 Characters Tweet

See the published tweet below:

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