Micr0-Blogging site Twitter has officially announced that it will no longer count media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) in its 140-character limit, and users can now share more in one tweet. While the tweets will still hold steady at a length of 140 characters, but any number of the variety of additions to the tweets will no longer count against that limit. According to the website, the feature was confirmed in May, and it has rolled out on September 19.
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
The company is also testing out new replies that will omit usernames of the people you are replying to from the character limit. Twitter also recently increased the character limit for private messages to 10,000 from 140, which makes sense given private conversations might have a longer conversation, and a user might not want to break it down into different messages with 140-characters each. Twitter also launched Stickers, and the ability to draw on pictures, similar to Snapchat, in an attempt to engage more users.
“One of the biggest priorities for this year is to refine our product and make it simpler… We’re focused on making Twitter a whole lot easier and faster. This is what Twitter is great at – what’s happening now, live conversation and the simplicity that we started the service with.”
-Jack Dorsey, CEO and Co-Founder, Twitter
Wow, the extra space for writing this tweet is really refreshing! This really changes the game for Twitter. To start with, the new limit wil https://t.co/pmEOXRIm3I
— Ben Thompson (@benthompson) September 19, 2016
Twitter has also rolled out a curated-tweets feature called Moments that is designed to catch infrequent users up on news that is trending on the service.
