It’s been precisely one year since initial reports and chatter began to emerge regarding Twitter’s intentions of increasing its longstanding 140-character count limit. This, of course, followed about a month or so after the actual increase of the site’s direct messages.
As Twitter users know, the 140-character count limitation makes it difficult to express and convey one’s thoughts, especially if you have a lot of “thought” that you’d like to convey. And not to mention the fact that pictures, quoted tweets, GIFs, polls and videos, all normally count against your 140-character count limit.
So generally, when crafting the perfect tweet to share news, to reply, or to vent, if you have to do so while allowing extra room for any of the above, this can be difficult at best. Well, all of that has changed—kind of sort of.
The Good News and the Catch
There’s always a catch isn’t there? The good news is that, yes, you can get more thought conveyed. But just how much? It’s still just the 140-character count limit, BUT the good news is that photos, GIFs, quoted tweets, polls, and etc. do not count towards your word count. Meaning, you can actually use your entire 140-character count limitation to convey all of your 140-character count thoughts.
The Social Media Giant Continues to Revamp
Could life on Twitter eventually include exceeding its 140-character count limit? Maybe—time will only tell. It is believed, however, that the social media giant is making changes to its character count limitations in an effort to increase its site users—to both attract users who tried the service over the years, but left, and to attract new users.
In the meantime, Twitter pros know there are ways around the character count limitation through popular services such as the hot spots of OneShot and TwitLonger. And some simply enjoy the limitations. For those of you who are not familiar with Twitter or these popular hot spots for increasing tweet lengths, the way it works is you create your longer tweet via these sites.
You post your tweet within the confined limitations of the 140-character count with a note to click on an external link to continue reading the tweet. Voila—longer tweet.
Jack Dorsey, the site’s cofounder and CEO has publicly confirmed efforts to expand the character count limitation. He explains that they initially included the character restriction to meet the needs of a single SMS message, hence making it easier to tweet your thoughts via your cell phone or smart phone. As the digital world continues to evolve, so too does Twitter.
What happened to the estimated 10,000?
If you had your heart set on a 10,000 character count as reported in the first quarter of this year, whether or not this will happen is highly debatable. It seems that many longtime diehard Twitter users have grown accustomed to the 140-character count limit, making this a staple of the site. Many users would not be happy with the change.
But in the end, Twitter will likely weigh the pros and cons of increasing a character count and if it’s fate, then perhaps one day they’ll roll out a greater increase. If not, that’s okay too. For the time being, enjoy the ability to actually, use the entire 140 characters allowable without having to jump through hoops when including pictures, polls, or retweeted quotes, etc.
What do you think? Should Twitter keep the 140-character count limitation or go for the 10,000, and why or why not? Inquiring minds want to know…
