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Twitter Announces Change to Character Limit

While there have been many changes to Twitter in recent years, the character limit that they started with has stayed the same. Until now. Twitter just announced that they are currently testing a change that will double the character rate for a select group of Twitter users. This change is intended to make it easier for users to enjoy Tweeting.

Twitter’s test of this new character limit is because of how difficult the 140 character limit can be to users. After doing some research, Twitter discovered that in languages like Japanese and Chinese tweets were on average a lot shorter. A big part of this is that in languages like these a single character may represent a noun. Since the English language and others like it typically require at least five letters a word, more tweets in these languages hit the 140 character limit.

While Twitter seems focused on providing English speakers with less frustrations while tweeting, many users are outraged that Twitter has chosen to focus on changes to the character limits to tweets rather than focusing on more important issues within the social media platform such as abusive accounts. Twitter users seem to feel that its time would be better spent trying to change the toxic environment of Twitter. The character limit change may be welcome to some, but it isn’t the change that many users feel will make Twitter easier to use.

One good thing that could come out of this character limit change might be allowing business owners more room to express themselves when connecting with customers. If you’ve ever tried tweeting about a certain product or sale and felt limited by the number of characters, you can see how this might be beneficial. It is possible that 280 words could help make social media advertising a bit easier in some cases.