One of Twitter’s trademark features is its 140 character limit. But is that about to change?
A report from ReCode suggests the social media company is considering a product or feature allowing users to create longer-form content on the service. Although it’s still not clear what such a product or service might look like, in the ReCode report Kurt Wagner and Jason Del Rey explain:
“Users can already tweet out blocks of text with products like OneShot, but those are simply images, not actual text published on Twitter.”
Twitter has declined to comment. However, The Wall Street Journal reports Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey is heading the project, which is currently named ‘140 Plus.’
Speculations Rife
With no official announcement so far on the Twitter 140 character limit, there’s a lot of speculation around the rumored change.
Some wonder whether it’s going to be easier to link tweets together in a “tweetstorm,” or embed more text within a tweet, with an “expand to view more” option.
A report from Slate.com postulates that Twitter is not going to completely ditch the Twitter 140 character limit. Instead, the company is probably going to just allow users to publish longer notes or articles directly on Twitter, rather than linking to them, the news source speculates.
Strong Reactions
Twitter’s rumored move to do away with the 140-character limit has met with some very strong reactions. Many believe the decision will ruin Twitter and turn it into another Facebook.
Don’t lift the character limit. Word economy is the last line of defense keeping twitter from becoming Facebook.
— Zeddonymous (@ZeddRebel) September 29, 2015
if twitter removes the character limit this place will turn into facebook why would anyone want that — ellie (@fitzsward) September 30, 2015
Considering Twitter’s popularity among users as a microblogging platform, the fears are not unwarranted.
However, there are also some who have welcomed the plan going as far as to comment that the change should have happened earlier.
I’m not sure I like the sound of Twitter’s plan to remove the 140 character limit. If you can’t say it in 140, then you are clearly an id
— Simone McCallum (@simonemccallum) September 30, 2015
On an Experimental Spree
In recent months, Twitter has introduced a number of new changes to engage users. In June, the platform lifted its 140 character limit for Direct Messages. And more recently the service announced it was removing share counts as part of a redesign of its buttons.
If Twitter decides to go ahead with a plan to offer longer content options, it will not be the only big social media platform to be contemplating big changes.
For example, Facebook is experimenting with a button that would express a sentiment other than “like” while Instagram has announced 30-second video ads.
Twitter Photo via Shutterstock
Aira Bongco
I guess it has to change. Statuses are no longer just about saying one sentence. Now videos and images seem to get more attention.
Twitter will probably use Twitter Cards to achieve a longer form of post – that way a longer tweet is optional both for publishers and consumers of content. There’ll be a button or link that displays ‘Expand tweet’ or something similar with perhaps a preview snippet of the blog/article.
Euros
I totally disagree with the above people.
It would be much better if they lift the limit up to 180 characters.
This way, someone can complete his whole thought in only 3 lines of text.
The 180 characters is SUPER and more than enough!
SaraCastic
I would have been on board with you if your comment had been kept to 180 characters.
<3 140 for LIFE