Until now, however, if you needed to tweet more than 140 characters, you had to resort to sending a private direct message, which currently provides space for up to 10,000 characters. However, the company is now said to be close to essentially doing away with that limit.
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The sources said the character limit could change before the final version of the product is unveiled.
However, some users took to Twitter to express their opposition to the new feature with the hashtag #beyond140.
Twitter users who struggle to stay inside the limits of their 140-character tweets could see that extended by thousands after the site’s co-founder hinted at change.
Re/code reports that a Twitter team is working on a project called “Beyond 140”, that would allow Twitter users to share their thoughts well beyond 140 characters.
Would a 10,000 character limit mean an end to long strings of numbered tweets – known as “tweetstorms”?
In other words: This tweet is an example of why we’re thinking about expanding the character count.
Twitter was founded in 2006 with the 140-character limit so it could be easier to use on cell phones that had a 160-character limit for text messages.
Dorsey tweeted a screenshot of a long note – made up of much more than 140 characters – that he had written to explain the potential feature change.
“Instead, what if the text… was actually text?” Text that could be highlighted.
Twitter has recently introduced the Moments feature and has been reported to be also considering making the timeline non-chronological. Whether or not that is still the timeline for the product remains to be seen, but with Dorsey’s official confirmation, we expect to see more sooner than later.
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Aly Pavela, a spokeswoman for San Francisco-based Twitter, declined to comment.
