Twitter plans to change how it counts certain characters in messages in order to allow users to send longer tweets, Bloomberg reports. Users have found clever ways to get around the character limit by taking pictures of longer text, using third party services that link to longer text and sending tweets in a string.
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The source said the update to Twitter’s character limit could come within the next two weeks.
Links now take up 23 characters of the total 140 available, regardless of how short the links are, while photos take up 20 characters. The 140-character ceiling dates back to the early days of the company when tweets had to be mobile text message-friendly, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the limit is going anywhere.
There has been much talk about Twitter dying, with the hashtag #RIPTwitter cropping up every now and then as financial reports revealed a massive decline in both revenue and users to the site.
Dame Marjorie Scardino – the title “dame” being the female equivalent of a knight in the British honours system – has assumed the role of lead independent director. CEO Jack Dorsey said in January that the organization was searching for better approaches to show content on Twitter, and would test in view of how individuals utilize the platform.
Initially, Twitter has rolled out a new feature to all its users.
Twitter has been experimenting with its core product ever since bringing back Jack Dorsey to the CEO role previous year.
So, just how many more characters will that give you per tweet?
Dorsey has since described the limit as a “beautiful constraint” that “inspires creativity and brevity”.
Facebook, meanwhile, has 1.65 billion users.
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Twitter changed the way it measures active users, no longer counting those who follow via SMS text messaging.
