Twitter Rolls Out 280-Character Tweets, Internet Yawns
Twitter is doubling the number of allowed tweets, from 140 to 280, for all users of the service.
The 140-character limit has long been criticized as too restrictive by users. Twitter indicated it spent a significant amount of time collecting data and feedback from a test group and found that when users don't have to fit their tweets into the 140-character limit, they see more people Tweeting. That's the good news. The bad news? Only 9 percent of tweets ever hit the 140 character limit anyway.
The change is reportedly rolling out now for every language (with the exception of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean - languages which it is possible to convey double the amount of information in one character as is possible in other languages such as English).
On mobile, Twitter is moving from the familiar 140-character counter to a circular progress indicator. It does not yet appear that the change has rolled out for desktop users but that will likely come at some point this week.
I've never been a fan of Twitter and only consider myself a casual user (at best), so I'm unsure that this will make much of a difference to a vast majority of users.
Will this influence your use of the social media platform?
