Just in time for long-winded thoughts about the election, Twitter is making a little wiggle room when it comes to its 140 character limit. According to The Verge, starting September 19th, media attachments, such as images, videos, and polls, will no longer reduce the character limit. Nor will quoted tweets or usernames at the beginning of replies.
Twitter first announced its plan to stop counting media attachments back in May, with CEO Jack Dorsey telling The Verge, "This is the most notable change we’ve made in recent times around conversation in particular, and around giving people the full expressiveness of the 140 characters. I’m excited to see even more dialog because of this.”
Before that, the social media company had bounced around the idea of of extending the character limit — like, really extending it. Recode reported that Twitter was thinking in ballpark of 10,000, but now it seems to have reconsidered. Instead, these changes are a good middle ground, eliminating unnecessary constraints while still keeping the brevity Twitter is best known for.
While these changes are set to go into action next Monday, it’s unclear if they’ll be rolled out all at once or implemented little by little. You better write a Twitter rant to find out.
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