Twitter Tests 10,000 Character Tweet to Replace 140 Character Limit

If you feel too suffocated to express yourself in Twitter’s current 140 character limit then prepare yourself for complete freedom of expression with Twitter’s new 10,000 character limit. If the recent reports from Re/code are anything to go by, then the company is currently contemplating increasing the limit of your Tweets to 10,000 characters.

This recent move by Twitter is quite an extension to its existing array of services which includes Twitter Cards, Moments and Images. It gives more breathing space to those users who felt a bit choked by the 140 character limit. With the new character limit set to arrive as early as Q1, 2016, as a user, you don’t need to rely on traditional third-party services or strings of tweets to get that message across to other the users onboard. But Twitter’s new character limit will have a dramatic impact on your timeline.

According to some credible sources, Twitter will only display 140 characters out of the 10,000 characters. A mere click/tap by the user on any post will take them to the full story of 10,000 characters.

Talking about the increased character limit, 10,000 is the current maximum size for a direct message on Twitter, which more or less does the job. And in comparison, the no.1 ranked social networking giant Facebook provides more breathing space to its users with its 60,000 character limit. Whether or not this recent move will be appreciated by Twitter enthusiasts, only time will tell. Irrespective of that, Twitter needs to do something about its growth in terms of its existing user base, which has become somewhat stagnant with time. And Twitter may be trying to address the problem through this latest development. But whatever it may be, Twitter’s spokesperson seems to be tight lipped to comment on the recent reports by Re/code.

Post these reports, Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey replied with a tweet that included his message and an image largely to the negative response from the users. In his response, Dorsey made it clear that the company will not scrap its future plans with regards to the extension of the current character limit but. However, he said that the company would implement their future plans in such a way that the 140 character limit “feel” will still remain intact.

Dorsey says that the 140-character limit is “a beautiful constraint” and promises that Twitter “will never lose that feeling.” He replied to the irked users saying that there are many users who upload their long messages as screenshots and images.

Instead, what if that text … was actually text? Text that could be searched. Text that could be highlighted. That’s more utility and power.

With that said, what Dorsey forgot to mention in his long infographic tweet was whether an infographic tweet with long text plus image or words buried in images would help Twitter’s growth both in terms of revenue and user base. Since longer tweets will accompany more keywords, it means more ad targeting opportunities for the company. And the more pragmatic approach would be long text-based tweets, which may eat less space as compared to tweets where users upload text in the form of an image. Owing to their less occupying functionality, it may not be so bad to employ the idea, similar to what Twitter users in the developing countries that somewhat lack the infrastructure that the many of the folks in the developed countries enjoy.

But Dorsey ended his tweet with a promise that whatever the company decides on its future course of action with regards to any changes in its existing array of services, it will inform to its user well in advance.

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