Twitter increases the character limit for tweets to 280 characters

[Arthur]

For everyone this time!

 

Source: Twitter Blog

 

In September, we launched a test that expanded the 140 character limit so every person around the world could express themselves easily in a Tweet. Our goal was to make this possible while ensuring we keep the speed and brevity that makes Twitter, Twitter. Looking at all the data, we’re excited to share we’ve achieved this goal and are rolling the change out to all languages where cramming was an issue.*

 

During the first few days of the test many people Tweeted the full 280 limit because it was new and novel, but soon after behavior normalized (more on this below). We saw when people needed to use more than 140 characters, they Tweeted more easily and more often. But importantly, people Tweeted below 140 most of the time and the brevity of Twitter remained.

 

Highlights are below and in our additional blogs about our experimentation process, extensive data analysis, research, and design work.

 

Easier to Tweet

Historically, 9% of Tweets in English hit the character limit. This reflects the challenge of fitting a thought into a Tweet, often resulting in lots of time spent editing and even at times abandoning Tweets before sending. With the expanded character count, this problem was massively reduced – that number dropped to only 1% of Tweets running up against the limit. Since we saw Tweets hit the character limit less often, we believe people spent less time editing their Tweets in the composer. This shows that more space makes it easier for people to fit thoughts in a Tweet, so they could say what they want to say, and send Tweets faster than before. You can see this happening in the graph below.

 

Keeping Twitter’s brevity

We – and many of you – were concerned that timelines may fill up with 280 character Tweets, and people with the new limit would always use up the whole space. But that didn’t happen. Only 5% of Tweets sent were longer than 140 characters and only 2% were over 190 characters. As a result, your timeline reading experience should not substantially change, you’ll still see about the same amount of Tweets in your timeline. For reference, in the timeline, Tweets with an image or poll usually take up more space than a 190 character Tweet.

 

It’s worth emphasizing again that people in the test got very excited about the extra space in the beginning and many Tweets went way beyond 140. People did silly (creative!) things like writing just a few characters per line to make their Tweets extra large. It was a temporary effect and didn’t last long. We expect to see some of this novelty effect spike again with this week’s launch and expect it to resume to normal behavior soon after.

 

Engagement

In addition to more Tweeting, people who had more room to Tweet received more engagement (Likes, Retweets, @mentions), got more followers, and spent more time on Twitter. People in the experiment told us that a higher character limit made them feel more satisfied with how they expressed themselves on Twitter, their ability to find good content, and Twitter overall.

 

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. We’ll continue listening and working to make Twitter easier for everyone while making sure we keep what you love.

 

* Japanese, Korean, and Chinese will continue to have 140 characters because cramming is not an issue in these languages. In fact, these languages have always been able to say more with their Tweets because of the density of their writing systems. We shared more about this thinking and our research here.

** On this graph, there is a small bump in the red line (which represents the group with 280 characters) at 140 because these people were also using older Twitter clients which didn’t have the ability to send longer Tweets, so they continued to hit the 140 character limit. This graph is for English-only Tweets.

 

[timbo343]

Yup, i see they've done away with the character count and now show a little circle (on the app anyway) which shows how many characters have been used.

[truebluesteve]

Well now pointless celebrities have twice as many characters to enlighten us mere mortals with their words of wisdom!

[mikeprice]

Well now pointless celebrities have twice as many characters to enlighten us mere mortals with their words of wisdom!

 

Please don't tell Trump!!!

[hardtailstar]

Yup, i see they've done away with the character count and now show a little circle (on the app anyway) which shows how many characters have been used.

 

That is really annoying. I want the digits back

[sted]

That is really annoying. I want the digits back

it goes to digits when you get near the end.

[hardtailstar]

it goes to digits when you get near the end.

 

Yeah but the old way said how many left from the start.

[sted]

Yeah but the old way said how many left from the start.

 

meh i can still shout into the void and tbh i dont need to know how close to the limit i am till im near it

[6Foot2]

Link:

[London Ambulance Service Tweet]

 

They were trying out the new character limit for tweets.

 

[6Foot2]

Link:

[J.K. Rowling Text Tweet]

 

J.K. Rowling:

 

Twitter’s destroyed its USP. The whole point, for me, was how inventive people could be within that concise framework.

[failnator]

Link:

[London Ambulance Service Tweet]

 

They were trying out the new character limit for tweets.

 

 

Why is that so amazing to read through XD

[DJ-1701]

Addison, Ashley, Amsden, Ashlan, Ashleigh, Ashlie, Ashly, Atheron, Addeson, Addie, Addisson, Addy, Addyson, Adison, Adisson, Adysin, Aland, Alcott, Ainsley, Avery, Anslie, Avary, Averie, Ainslee, Ainslie, Aynslee, Barrett, Benedikt, Bennett, Blake, Bobby, Braxton, Brayan, Brenda,

 

... LIES! It only supports 34.

[v1images]

Quite a welcome change, should now be able to match content comfortably across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter!

[Arthur]

... LIES! It only supports 34.

34 x 25 now!

 

https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/product/2017/nicethreads.html

 

At Twitter, we have a history of studying how people use our service and then creating features to make what they’re doing easier. The Retweet, '@reply', and hashtag are examples of this. A few years ago we noticed people creatively stitching Tweets together to share more information or tell a longer story – like this. We saw this approach (which we call “threading”) as an innovative way to present a train of thought, made up of connected but individual elements.

 

Now, hundreds of thousands of threads are Tweeted every day! But this method of Tweeting, while effective and popular, can be tricky for some to create and it’s often tough to read or discover all the Tweets in a thread. That’s why we’re thrilled to share that we’re making it simpler to thread Tweets together, and to find threads, so it’s easier to express yourself on Twitter and stay informed.

 

We’ve made it easy to create a thread by adding a plus button in the composer, so you can connect your thoughts and publish your threaded Tweets all at the same time. You can continue adding more Tweets to your published thread at any time with the new “Add another Tweet” button. Additionally, it’s now simpler to spot a thread – we’ve added an obvious “Show this thread” label.

 

A few weeks ago, we expanded our character count to make it easier for people to fit what they’re thinking into a Tweet. But we know people also may want to serialize a longer story or thought, or provide ongoing commentary on an event or topic. That’s where this update to threads comes in! You’ve been using threads in creative ways like these for years – the ways and reasons to thread your Tweets are limited only by your imagination.

 

We’re rolling out these updates to everyone on iOS, Android, and Twitter.com in the coming weeks. Make sure to update your app to check it out. Also, thank you – threads are a nod to the creativity of the Twitter community. Tweet us what you think!

 

 

https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/12/twitter-officially-launches-threads-a-new-feature-for-easily-writing-tweetstorms/

 

Twitter today is announcing the launch of a new feature that will allow people to more easily post tweetstorms – that is, those series of connected tweets that have grown to become a popular workaround for getting past Twitter’s character count limitation in order to share longer thoughts. The company confirmed last month it was testing the feature – which it’s now calling “threads” – across its iOS and Android apps.

 

Twitter tells us there’s currently a limit of 25 entries in a thread, but that number may be subject to change depending on how the feature is adopted by the wider user base.