Twitter is widely-known as a service with strict character limit. According to its founder, this should make users to brainstorm what they want to say, before tweeting. But as time passes, this can't be the case anymore.
No other major social media has character limit as strict as Twitter, so Twitter is thinking to blend its previous iteration, with others. And that is by officially expanding its limit to 280 characters.
Twitter is publicly rolling out the update to all users in supported languages.
Twitter cited that the reason for its decision referenced to how the character constraints impacted users differently, depending on their language.
As an example, Twitter said that those who tweeted in languages like Japanese, Korean and Chinese were able to express around double the amount of information in a single character, compared with users who spoke English, Spanish, Portuguese or French.
To show the change, when users want to send a tweet, Twitter won't show that famous 140-character countdown. Instead, Twitter is replacing it with a circle ring 'loading' icon which loads up and changes color as the tweet gets longer. The countdown will reappear alongside the loading icon when users have 20 characters left (260 characters have been used).
Related: Twitter Is Changing How It Counts To 140: Four Of The Biggest Shifts In Its History
The company had first announced the controversial plan to move beyond its traditional 140 characters back in September, noting at the time how a longer character count allowed users to express more of their thoughts without running out of room to tweet.
Initially, Twitter was testing it to a selected group of users before delivering it to all users.
"We are making this change after listening and observing a problem our global community was having (it wasn't easy enough to Tweet!), studying data to understand how we could improve, trying it out, and listening to your feedback," wrote Twitter product manager Aliza Rosen in a blog post.
While more means better to some users, some others don't really like it. Twitter's decision to increase its character limit was met with a fair amount of controversy, given that one of Twitter’s defining characteristics is the brevity of users’ posts.
Many argued that the increase to 280 characters would make Twitter less readable, as longer tweets will clutter and fill their timelines.
Others suggested that Twitter’s focus on a feature no one really asked for was diverting its attention from more critical problems. Like for example, solving online bullying, abuse and harassment.. These are the problems that have become common on social medias, including Twitter.
Other has also argued that the expansion doesn’t really mean people will be able to better express themselves. There is even a user that commented what Twitter needs now, is an edit button.
In short, Twitter’s user base is somewhat split on whether the change would ruin or make Twitter a better place.
But at the end of the day, this is Twitter's way to make people in engaging more with others on its platform, and to become more friendly to new users. The company believes that the key to growing its user base is making the service easier for newcomers, reducing roadblocks, including the inability to finish a thought.
CEO Jack Dorsey said in series of tweets that the original 140-character limit was arbitrary, inspired by the 160-character limit for SMS messages over cellphones.
He expected "the snark and critique" about the change and said most users likely won't use the full 280 characters.
"What matters now is we clearly show why this change is important, and to prove to you it's better," he said. "Give us some time to learn and confirm (or challenge!) our ideas."
Another update that Twitter is releasing, is allowing users to use 50 characters for a name. Previously, users were limited to only 20 characters, but now you have 50 to work with. This update will give users enough room to saturate their name with emoji, for example.
This is also a welcome move for people who have actually have really long names. In some languages and cultures, names can often go past 20 characters.
Twitter's previous attempts to drop its 140-character limit, was when it dropped the limit on DM, and later when photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets no longer counted toward 140 characters.