Twitter was originally known as a social media popular for its restricted 140-characters tweet.
Then it considered extending that limit to 280 characters, which is an extra 140 characters per tweet.
At that time, user reviews were mixed: some showed that their happy, others came outraged and some were confused. But as time passed, people actually loved the change, and Twitter here is trying to show that.
After almost a year after the switch, Twitter releases some data which underlines the added value of those extra characters.
Previously, Twitter reported that around 9 percent of tweets use the 140 character capacity mark. When it boosted the limit to 280 characters, Twitter reported that less than 1 percent of tweets were making use of the expanded limit.
Interestingly, even with the additional characters, Twitter reported that only 12 percent of tweets were actually exceeding the original 140 character limit.
What this means, while people do have more room to say things on their tweet, the data shows that only a few people do actually use the extended character limit to its full extent. As a result, Twitter timelines have not changed much between the two period.
In fact, there has not been any significant change in how tweets are presented on screen.
And apparently, the trend also applies to all languages: only 6 percent of all tweets are longer than 140 characters, and 3 percent are longer than 190 characters.
r u abbreving less rn?
Since the switch to 280 characters a year ago, we've seen an increase in people writing out full words and phrases. pic.twitter.com/pjnfyVmilY— Twitter Data (@TwitterData) October 30, 2018
On its report, Twitter notes that messages which include the word "please" have increased by 54 percent since the change, and 22 percent more tweets have included the words "thank you". Also, 30 percent more tweets have included a question mark, and there are more replies to tweets.
This shows that the added opportunity to create full sentences could be leading to better engagements.
Twitter also said that there has been a decline in the use of abbreviations. For example, the word "gr8" (-36 percent), "b4" (-13 percent), and "sry" (-5 percent), as people favor the full words - "great" (+32 percent), "before" (+70 percent), and "sorry" (+31 percent).
While the change was for the better, Twitter is still having concerns about troll users and abusers. But still, Twitter that evolves with minor changes here and there may have had a huge impact on how people interact with others' tweets.
Going forward, hopefully for the better.