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Tweets to get longer

by on06 January 2016


10,000 characters

Twitter is building a new feature which will allow  allow users to post tweets as long as 10,000 characters.  Its current limit is 140-character limit.

This will mean that a tweet could be more than a 1,000 words with spaces between words and punctuation. Twitter may launch the service towards the end of the first quarter but has not set an official date, Re/code said, citing sources familiar with the plans. They said the character limit could change before the final version of the product is unveiled.

Jack Dorsey, the company's co-founder, who returned as chief executive in October, in a series of tweets did not say whether Twitter would expand the limit. But he did call it "a beautiful constraint."

He added that the company has seen more people sharing screenshots of text, which are a way to get around the 140-character limit.

"We're not going to be shy about building more utility and power into Twitter for people," Dorsey wrote in a screenshot of text that was longer than 140 characters. As long as it's consistent with what people want to do, we're going to explore it."

Twitter has come under increasing pressure to boost user growth and ad revenue. It had its slowest user growth in 2015 - it now boasts just over 300 million users - and was eclipsed by photo-sharing app Instagram, owned by Facebook which surpassed 400 million users last year.

Twitter users are not that keen.  They have created a hashtag #beyond140 to moan about having to use longer phrases on the basis that if the limit is no longer there, they will have to use all 1000 words..

Last modified on 06 January 2016
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