The microblogging Twitter is making a huge change to its 140-character limit. And that is one of its four biggest change in its history.
As a start, tweets' character counts are no longer caped when including links to media (pictures, GIFs, video, polls, or Quote Tweets or any other attachments). This however, only applies to media uploaded directly to Twitter. External media links will still count. But still, the change is marking Twitter's 140-character limit a thing of the past.
The news started on early May when Twitter appeared to do some testing. This is Twitter's hope to help people engage more by having more meaningful dialogue. Previously, Twitter has removed the 140-character limit on DMs.
The second big change is Twitter adding a Retweet button to users' own posts so they can resurface old content. With this, they can easily retweet or quote tweets, or just making a better looking tweetstorm by having more control in spiking up activities surrounding certain topic. They can also add context or commentary.
Third is that users' tweets that start by mentioning another user, but are not direct replies, will now be treated like normal tweets, rather than like the usual replies. The tweets will no longer be seen by those followers and tweeters. Instead, they'll be seen by all of the tweeters' followers. This straightforward change is making its way for the next bigger shift.
The final change is Twitter bidding goodbye to its famous @ username handle rule. So instead or counting the handle, Twitter will show a small text above the tweet to indicate that it is a reply. Tweets that start with a username will reach all followers without even mentioning them. This should help solve Twitter's famous "canoe" problem which occurs when names of users are taking up so much space there is no more characters left to say anything else. The change however applies only to replies, not "mentions." So if a user mentions another user in the tweet body, his or her handle will still appear on the said tweet and counted against the character limit.
As those changes are rolling out, Twitter is giving developers the opportunity to make necessary changes behind the scene before their users can get accustomed to the new changes.
Over the years, Twitter has grown from a small community microblogging platform into a fully-pledged social media that influences many activity in the fast-paced world. And for that, Twitter is seeing its tweets to evolve from a simple 140-character message into "a rich canvas for creative expression featuring photos, videos, hashtags, Vines, and more."
Previously, the company has included GIFs, share on Periscope, Moments, heart-shaped favorites, among others. With the new update, Twitter wants its users to do more.
Before, when users are trying to tweet, they are cramming their thoughts into a 140-character tweet. This made them think a lot about Twitter instead of what they want to say.
While those changes are perhaps the most notable, this is marking the first time in Twitter's history that it's giving a change to its 140-character policy. The news should be a good one to Twitter's power users and self-promoters because they can now retweet and quote tweet themselves, removing the needs to do the work they once required to adore followers.
No More 'Twitter' Headaches
The changes Twitter is doing have been suggested for years. Former CEO Dick Costolo has missed it, but when Jack Dorsey returned, the company's co-founder is providing the confidence to radically alter the service.
Dorsey said:
"We're not giving up on the idea of Twitter being in the moment. That concept of brevity, speed and live conversation - being able to think of something and put it out to the world instantly - that's what's most important. We're always going to look for opportunities to make tweets a lot more expressive, and enable people to say what they want to say. As long as things are fast, easy, simple and expressive, we're going to look at what we can do to make Twitter a better experience."
After his comeback to the company, Dorsey is focusing on simplicity and highlighting key motivation changes. He concluded that Twitter is a platform that is too confusing for new users, and this is harmful for its growth. The .@ function, for example, has been the feature which confuse many new users.
As Twitter is having a difficult time in maintaining users' engagement on the platform, new changes are always welcome. As some points, Twitter has succeeded in some of its previous changes by some metrics, while other changes are starting to see their results.
But for whatever the outcome should be, Twitter is positive that there is hope as long as it keeps delivering its best by transforming into a fully-modern social media platform.