Twitter Testing 280-Character Tweet Limit

"It'southward staying," Twitter chief Jack Dorsey said last year of the platform'south 140-character limit. Well, it appears the company has had a alter of heart, as it's now testing a 280-grapheme limit.

The expanded tweet format is "only available to a small-scale grouping right now," according to product manager Aliza Rosen. "What matters nigh is that this works for our community—we will be collecting data and gathering feedback forth the way."

Why the change? Rozen pointed to languages that permit people to limited themselves in fewer characters. With "languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese you can convey virtually double the amount of data in one grapheme equally you lot tin can in many other languages, like English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French," Rozen wrote in a web log mail service.

As a effect, English speakers like Rozen find themselves removing words or not sending a tweet at all. "Our enquiry shows united states of america that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people Tweeting in English, but information technology is not for those Tweeting in Japanese," she wrote.

Japanese Tweets are typically xv characters versus English tweets, which accept 34. "In all markets, when people don't take to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people Tweeting," he said.

For a company that has struggled with growth, developing a more engaged community is a must. At the end of the last quarter, it had 328 million monthly active users (68 meg in the United states), the same as the previous quarter. Compare that to 2.01 billion monthly active Facebook users every bit of June 30.

Rozen best-selling that people might take an "emotional attachment" to 140 characters. "Nosotros felt information technology, too," she wrote. "Merely we tried this, saw the power of what it volition do, and fell in love with this new, still brief, constraint."

Twitter has fabricated a few small-scale changes to the graphic symbol limit over the years. Concluding year, information technology announced that photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets would not count toward a user'due south 140-grapheme limit. Earlier this month, at that place were reports that Twitter was testing a "tweetstorm" function; where 1 user sends out multiple tweets in quick succession to get across their bulletin, hopefully in a thread. The reported tweetstorm role would have a block of text and automatically divide them into separate tweets.

About Chloe Albanesius

Chloe has led PCMag'due south news coverage for more than than 10 years, editing and writing stories about the innovations that have shaped the final decade and the companies behind them. She also oversees the site's how-to coverage. Earlier joining PCMag.com, Chloe was a reporter roofing tech policy on Capitol Loma for The National Journal'south Technology Daily and fiscal Information technology for Incisive Media in NYC. She's held internships at NBC'south Meet the Press, washingtonpost.com, the Tate Gallery press office in London, Roll Call, and Congressional Quarterly. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from American Academy in Washington, D.C.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/news/17605/twitter-testing-280-character-tweet-limit

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