Twitter announced Tuesday that they are allowing a select group of users to publish Tweets of up 280 characters in length. Why the change? Internal findings showed that the 140 character limit impacts users differently depending on their language. Users Tweeting in English and Spanish are exponentially more likely to hit the current character limit than those who post in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. With the change, Twitter is “hoping fewer Tweets run into the character limit, which should make it easier for everyone to Tweet.”
This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu
— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017
So, just like with every social media update, there are bound to be some knee jerk reactions and hot takes. Here are some from the Hurrdat team and our favorites from the Twitter community—in 140 characters or less.
Will Stott, Social Media Strategist (@WillStottTweets): A smaller character count encourages creativity. Tight character parameters catalyze users to be more thoughtful and succinct when posting
Logan Livers, Social Media Strategist (@LogieBera): What I like about Twitter is that shorter tweets make it easy to scroll through my timeline. No one tweet dominates another.
Christian Andrew, Social Media Strategist (@_christiandrew): Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. It’ll be interesting to watch people and brands find the balance.
The 280-character limit is a terrible idea. The whole beauty of Twitter is that it forces you to express your ideas concisely (1/47)
— James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) September 26, 2017
Dog rates will always be 140 or less. If I can’t convince you that the dog I’m featuring is amazing in that confined space, I have failed https://t.co/QkABof12jI
— WeRateDogs™ (Oct 3) (@dog_rates) September 26, 2017
OH HOLY SHIT. I figured out what we should do with the new 140 characters.
´•._.•´¯`•._.•´Forum Signatures Are Back Baby`•._.•´¯`•.¸¸.•´
— austin walker (@austin_walker) September 26, 2017
What do you think about the change? Let us know in the comments!
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