In the past, Twitter has tinkered with the limit in other ways.
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Recode’s sources say that Twitter has been discussing how the 140-character limit is measured.
Enter interim CEO Jack Dorsey, who’s all for an evolutionary moment in Twitterdom, and suddenly the landscape of the Twitterverse looks ripe for construction. SunTrust analyst Robert Peck says the pace of innovation has quickened at Twitter under Dorsey’s stewardship. One employee at Twitter told Re/code that Jack’s approval of longer-form content has made the team feel more comfortable with introducing such a large change.
If true, the move wouldn’t be a huge surprise, given that Dorsey has reportedly been the frontrunner in Twitter’s CEO search since Dick Costolo stepped down in June after six years.
Twitter expects that such measures and changes in policy will attract new users and motivate the current ones to get more active. Twitter reported that its second-quarter monthly average users grew at the slowest pace since the company went public in 2013. And in April, Twitter rolled out a new feature that allows users to post longer comments with the tweets they retweet. Freeing tweeters from the confines of the 140-character limit will also give them more freedom of expression.
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Twitter has more than 300 million users, far behind the 1.5 billion people hooked on Facebook’s online social network. While there is something to be desired as far as harassment reporting is concerned, the company seems to be seriously considering a feature that would allow for long tweets.
