Twitter is experimenting with increasing the character limit for tweets from the long-standing 140 character limit, born from the service’s SMS origins, to 280 characters. Twitter says this gives you more characters to express yourself. In a post by Twitter Product Manager, Aliza Rosen and Senior Software Engineer, Ikuhiro Ihara.
One of the first Twitter users to be able to tweet in longer form is Ellen DeGeneres who is clearly happy about being able to be more verbose when communicating with her 73.8 Million followers.
I’m so excited to be part of @Twitter’s #280characters rollout. Let me just say it’s an honor and a privilege. I’d like to thank my wonderf
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) September 27, 2017
Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey also chimed in on the change.
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
I’ve been a Twitter user in a big way since February 2008, during that time I’ve often drafted Tweets that I ended up not posting as the process of abbreviating my thoughts was too limiting it simply wasn’t worth it. Solutions like a chain of posts, or services like Tweetlonger just don’t achieve what you need sometimes, so while this prospect scares some traditionalists, I personally welcome the ability to post longer tweets, I just hope products like TweetDeck support it sooner rather than later.
Below is the post from Twitter which explains the reasons for Twitter’s experiment.
Trying to cram your thoughts into a Tweet – we’ve all been there, and it’s a pain.
Interestingly, this isn’t a problem everywhere people Tweet. For example, when I (Aliza) Tweet in English, I quickly run into the 140 character limit and have to edit my Tweet down so it fits. Sometimes, I have to remove a word that conveys an important meaning or emotion, or I don’t send my Tweet at all. But when Iku Tweets in Japanese, he doesn’t have the same problem. He finishes sharing his thought and still has room to spare. This is because in languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese you can convey about double the amount of information in one character as you can in many other languages, like English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French.
We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, so we’re doing something new: we’re going to try out a longer limit, 280 characters, in languages impacted by cramming (which is all except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean).
Although this is only available to a small group right now, we want to be transparent about why we are excited to try this. Here are some of our findings:
We see that a small percent of Tweets sent in Japanese have 140 characters (only 0.4%). But in English, a much higher percentage of Tweets have 140 characters (9%). Most Japanese Tweets are 15 characters while most English Tweets are 34. Our research shows us that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people Tweeting in English, but it is not for those Tweeting in Japanese. Also, in all markets, when people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people Tweeting – which is awesome!
Although we feel confident about our data and the positive impact this change will have, we want to try it out with a small group of people before we make a decision to launch to everyone. What matters most is that this works for our community – we will be collecting data and gathering feedback along the way. We’re hoping fewer Tweets run into the character limit, which should make it easier for everyone to Tweet.
Twitter is about brevity. It’s what makes it such a great way to see what’s happening. Tweets get right to the point with the information or thoughts that matters. That is something we will never change.
We understand since many of you have been Tweeting for years, there may be an emotional attachment to 140 characters – we felt it, too. But we tried this, saw the power of what it will do, and fell in love with this new, still brief, constraint. We are excited to share this today, and we will keep you posted about what we see and what comes next.
