Microblogging site Twitter is to stop counting photographs and links in its 140-character limit for tweets, according to a report from Bloomberg. This change could be made available within the next two weeks.Links currently take up to 23 characters of a tweet, reducing the space available to users for their own message when sharing online content via a link.
The 140-character limit was originally added to make tweets fit into a text message. When the company launched in 2006, before smartphones were available, many users typed their tweets as texts before posting them.Jack Dorsey the founder of Twitter has described the limit as a “beautiful constraint” that “inspires creativity and brevity”. However, the company has struggled to attract new users and has seen its share price decline by more than 70% over the past year.
Whether this change will help address the declining user engagementwe reported in April of this year remains to be seen.
Last June, Twitter announced it would increase the limit on direct messages between one user and another to 10,000 characters.
First published by Adrian G Stewart at OOKII.Company
Adrian G Stewart
