The news broke last night: Twitter is officially testing a 280 character limit with a select number of people.
In a blog post, Twitter detailed why they’re conducting this experiment. Twitter explains that people trying to express themselves on the Twitter platform occasionally run into the 140 character limit and have to edit their tweets to fit the character limit space. They explain that in other languages like Japanese, it’s easier to tweet in the local language because it requires fewer characters. So to battle that restriction, they’re adding this new 280 character limit feature.
CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey demonstrated the use of the 280 character limit with this tweet:
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! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu
— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017
Of course, lots of people on Twitter weren’t too happy with this news, with many asking why this was a priority and not adding an edit button functionality.
For now, it’s all experimentation. There’s no telling if the data that results from this experiment will lead to Twitter rolling out this 280 character limit to all users.
Twitter has been rumoured to be testing a Twitter thread feature so it’s more likely we’ll see that first before we all get the 140 character limit.
What do you think about this? How do you feel about this new 280 character limit? Vote in our twitter poll or leave a comment below.
