Yahoo Finance Twitter tests doubling length of tweets to 280 characters
Twitter is testing doubling the length of its tweets to 280 characters, a move that overhauls the social network's defining feature.
A small percentage of Twitter's 328 million users will find they can post longer tweets from Tuesday evening, with all other users will be able to see them.
The test applies across Twitter apart from in Japanese, Korean and Chinese, which use scripts instead of letters, meaning tweets in those languages are rarely constrained by the existing limit.
Twitter has used 140 characters as the basis for tweets since it was founded 11 years ago. It made photos, polls and quoted tweets exempt from the limit last year but text has remained bound by the restriction throughout Twitter's history.
Given the social network's famously vocal and change-averse audience, the move is likely to prove controversial at first. Changes made over recent years such as an algorithmic timeline, a new way of replying to tweets and replacing stars with hearts for liking tweets have proved controversial.
The brevity of tweets has been seen as one of the service's most appealing features. Twitter product manager Aliza Rosen said the company knew doubling the character count was likely to generate controversy, but was confident that it would be eventually embraced.
"We understand since many of you have been Tweeting for years, there may be an emotional attachment to 140 characters – we felt it, too. But we tried this, saw the power of what it will do, and fell in love with this new, still brief, constraint," she said.
Nine per cent of tweets in English run up to the 140 character limit, compared to 0.4 per cent of those in Japanese.
The small percentage of users who will be able to post longer tweets have been randomly chosen, giving those users special privileges during the experiment. The company did not say when it will decide if the feature should be expanded.
"Although we feel confident about our data and the positive impact this change will have, we want to try it out with a small group of people before we make a decision to launch to everyone," Rosen said.
"What matters most is that this works for our community – we will be collecting data and gathering feedback along the way. We’re hoping fewer tweets run into the character limit, which should make it easier for everyone to tweet."
Twitter's current limit was set in the days when users were expected to send and read tweets via text message. Texts ran to 160 characters, so Twitter set it at 140 leaving extra characters for a username.
