September 20, 2016

Twitter Finally Makes Character Count Changes

Twitter’s longer tweets have finally arrived, with users now able to make full use of the 140 character limit regardless of media add-ons to their tweets.

As the social media network announced back in May, media attachments, including videos, photos and polls, no longer count toward the character limit.

Twitter handles

Twitter is also still toying with the idea of excluding Twitter handles from the character count when replying to a tweet.

The company has been mulling over changing tweet length for more than a year and, at one point, it was reported that character limits on Twitter messages would be increased to 10,000.

That plan was ditched, though, as Twitter co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey, revealed he was not keen on the idea. He explained that, while some tweets may be expanded, “the majority of tweets will always be short and sweet.”

Twitter’s 140-character limit was initially implemented to sync with the character limits on most mobile phone text messages.

Dorsey described this as a “beautiful constraint” that “inspires creativity and brevity.”