Twitter: Social media platform announces 140-character limit, other changes

Twitter says it is making the announcement now to give developers that have layered loads of third-party applications around its platform to be able to accommodate the changes.

As reported earlier on Pulse Tech, Twitter has officially announced that it is making changes to how the 140-character limit works, as well as other changes.

"So, you can already do a lot in a Tweet, but we want you to be able to do even more. In the coming months we’ll make changes to simplify Tweets including what counts toward your 140 characters, so for instance, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) will no longer “use up” valuable characters," said Twitter in a blog post.

 

Here are the changes that will be made in addition to the changes to the character limit:

• Replies: In replying tweets, @names will no longer count in the 140-character setup. This will make conversations on Twitter easier, less-cluttered, and straightforward.

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• Media attachments: When you add attachments like pictures, GIFs, video, and polls to your tweets, that media will no longer count as characters in your tweets leaving more room for words.

• Retweet and Quote your own tweets: Twitter will enable the retweet button on your own tweets, which will let you retweet or quote yourself when you want or feel like a good tweet went unnoticed.

• No more .@: These changes will help simplify the rules around tweets that start with a username. New tweets that start with a username will now be seen by all your followers.

 

Twitter says it is making the announcement now to give developers that have layered loads of third-party applications around its platform to be able to accommodate the changes.

As for users, the changes will be rolled out in the coming months globally on both web and Twitter's mobile app.