Twitter began relaxing its character limit on Monday, meaning media content like photos, videos and GIFs won’t eat into your character count.
Twitter first announced this series of changes back in May, though the rollout had been delayed to give the developer community time to adapt. In recent months, Twitter has moved to simplify its platform to appeal to a broader base of users, having seen its growth plateau. The company’s lagging growth has lead TechCrunch, Fortune and other industry observers to speculate the company could be looking for a buyer.
Say more about what's happening! Rolling out now: photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets no longer count toward your 140 characters. pic.twitter.com/I9pUC0NdZC
— Twitter (@Twitter) September 19, 2016
Here’s a full rundown of the changes coming to Twitter:
- You can still only use a total of 140 characters, but some content no longer counts toward that total.
- Non-text content like videos, GIFs, pictures and polls do not count toward the character limit. Users may attach up to four photos or one GIF, video, poll, or quote tweet without losing any characters.
- Links will still count toward character limit.
- @username mentions won’t count toward the 140 character limit. Each tweet can mention up to 50 people.
- It will once again be possible to retweet or quote tweet yourself.
On its support forum, Twitter cautioned that some tweets may appear to be cut off and replaced with URLs to mobile web addresses, and advised mobile users to upgrade to the latest versions of the Twitter app for Android and iOS.
What do you think of the changes rolled out on Twitter? Would you like to see more modifications to the platform in the future? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
