We’ve heard rumblings for a while that Twitter plans to move away from its simple USP (140 characters per tweet, a list of chronological tweets on your timeline) in favour of a more curated, less restrictive model.
Today, the site announced changes that will reduce the limits on tweet length, but not in an extreme way – rumours that the site planned to kill off the character limit entirely seem unfounded, at least for now. Instead, usernames and media attachments like links, polls or images will no longer be included in the limit, which will come as a relief to anyone with a long handle or media brands (naming no names) which often tweet links. The company says the changes will roll out over the “next several months”.
This probably doesn’t mean you’ll be able to have a poll, a picture and a Periscope livestream in a single tweet, but it does mean you could potentially @ in unlimited numbers of people. For anyone who has been harassed on the site, this isn’t great news – at least in the past trolls’ audiences were limited by tweet length.
The site is also killing off “.@”: the method used by users who want replies or direct addressals to be seen by all their followers. At the moment, any tweet starting with an “@” doesn’t feed onto the main timeline, and can only be seen by selecting “tweets and replies” on a specific user’s profile.
In future, Twitter will recognise which tweets are actually replies and hide them, but non-replies which start with an “@” will still display in feeds. You’ll also be able to retweet yourself, or quote your own tweets, so you can make replies appear on your followers’ feeds if desired. The press release also toe-curlingly suggests that you could use this function for when you “feel like a really good one went unnoticed”.
The move suggests Twitter wants users to post media-filled tweets, and doesn’t want to punish those that do with decreased space for a message. The social media site recently brought live-streaming app Periscope, which will also beneift from the change.
The company explains in the press release that the original 140 character limit, based on the length of a text message, is a little out of date. Now, apparently, tweets have become a “rich canvas for creative expression”. You heard them – go forth and Periscope.
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