Listen up y’all. Let’s just get to it. You can now tweet in (basically) more than 140 characters.
You may have noticed yesterday, as The Verge reported, that Twitter has cut down on exactly which types of content will count toward its signature 140-character composition limit. Images, GIFs, videos, polls, and quoted tweets are now inherent to the tweet itself. What does this extra wiggle room mean for users? It means more flexibility in composing that tweet to complain about the election season or to get excited about #tacotuesday or something.
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
Twitter first announced that it was going to stop counting all those extra characters way back in May, but never settled on a roll out date. Here is what they decided would change:
- Replies: When replying, the @handle would no longer count towards the characters
- Media attachments, aka GIFs galore
- Retweet and Quote Tweeting
- Say “Adios” to .@-ing. #blessed
*leaves twitter for 10 minutes and suddenly media doesn't count towards character limit* pic.twitter.com/RRoI460TgF
— Lars Gotrich 🍷🌊 (@totalvibration) September 19, 2016
“This is the most notable change we’ve made in recent times around conversation in particular, and around giving people the full expressiveness of the 140 characters,” CEO Jack Dorsey told The Verge in May. “I’m excited to see even more dialog because of this.”
Twitter has previously teetered on extending the character limit but way back in January, Dorsey praised the 140-character limit. It was originally implemented because he wanted messages to be constructed and relayed just like an SMS message. He never wanted to lose the creativity, speed, and brevity of that character limit; Dorsey wanted to cut off #tweetstorms (think Kanye West).
Dorsey and the whole Twitter gang believe this new update and approach will stay true to that ever so concise feeling, all the while adding convenience and enhancing the overall Twitter experience.
So Twitter-verse, amp up that conversation. How are you going to take advantage of Twitter’s new character game? Let us know in the comments, or over on, well, Twitter.
