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posted by martyb on Thursday September 28 2017, @08:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the realDoubledTrump dept.

Twitter will allow some users to post up to 280 characters in a single tweet:

Twitter is experimenting with doubling the number of characters users can include in a single tweet, the company announced on Tuesday.

Some users will be able to write messages with 280 characters, double the normal 140-character limit, as the social media site considers whether to launch the feature more widely.

"This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence!" Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wrote in a single tweet — something that would have been impossible before the limit was doubled to 280.

The change should benefit ASCII/Latin-1 users the most:

Character limit is a source of frustration for people tweeting in English, but not, for example, in Japanese, Twitter said. The company said its research shows that 9 percent of all tweets in English hit 140 characters, while only 0.4 percent in Japanese reach the maximum.

Is Twitter throwing things at the wall to try to avoid becoming the next Myspace?

Twitter has been struggling to invigorate user growth and advertising revenue while investors are questioning whether the San Francisco-based company can find a long-term growth path. Twitter reported 328 million active monthly users in the second quarter, unchanged from the previous period. Shares have declined 15 percent in the two months since then, closing at $16.59 Tuesday in New York.

It was already possible for tweets to go over the limit due to the way URLs are counted, and @replies not being counted towards the character limit.


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