Twitter has announced several small changes that should have a big impact on making the social media platform less complicated for people to use. One of the most important changes applies to the character limit. While 140 is still the maximum, new allowances mean that pictures, videos, quoted tweets and links will no longer count against that number. Names in replies and polls will also be exempt from the limit.
The changes are expected to be rolled out over the next few months. After allowing some time for developers using the Twitter API to make the necessary updates to their apps, Twitter plans to introduce the changes one at a time. Twitter is hoping that simplifying the tweeting process will encourage people to share more videos and pictures. The move will also eliminate the need for people to find creative ways to express themselves using just a few characters when they want to share media, something that has been identified as a deterrent for new and established users alike.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that including usernames as part of the 140-chracter count discouraged discussions because the addition of just a few people in a tweet would leave very few characters left for a conversation, so exempting it was a logical move.
In addition, Twitter will start broadcasting “reply” tweets to all of a user’s followers, eliminating the need to add a character to a reply that users want everyone to see. This is the sort of quirk that was preventing many people from getting comfortable with the service.
Matt McGee of Search Engine Land thinks users and advertisers alike will embrace the changes. He said: “It means more room for text and conversation in each tweet and less frustration for everyone who’s been forced to edit their words in order to fit them inside Twitter’s constraints.”
Promoted Tweets will also fall under the new guidelines, which means marketers will have more space to get their message across.
Users will also be able to retweet their own posts when they want to “share a new reflection” or highlight a past tweet that they want to draw more attention to.
New tweet length rules have been rumored for quite some time. At the same time, Twitter appears to be avoiding the type of radical changes that would drive away loyal users. The social media platform’s user base has been stagnating recently, leading to concerns about its future. Last month’s quarterly update showed 310 monthly active users, which was only up three percent from the figure noted a year ago and not much higher than the previous quarter’s 305 million.
