Many people have shown discontent in the way Twitter has stuck to the 140-character limit even in the age of smartphones and considering the reach Twitter has these days. After all the drama, Twitter is considering breaking some rules to relax the limit and allow more characters to fill up the space.
While there had been rumours about Twitter exploring to allow word limit to 10,000 characters earlier this year, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter clarified that it is not going to happen. In fact, in a twitter update, he termed twitter word limit as a “beautiful Constraint”
— Jack (@jack) January 5, 2016
However, it seems that while 140 character limit will stay, they are going to make some concessions, so that you can crunch more textual content in your tweet. Twitter plans to stop considering links and photos a part of the tweet. The update is expected to be rolled-out in two weeks once the decision is made public.
Twitter had fixed the character limit to 140 in the times when smartphones were not even a thing and people would tweet using text message, which usually allows upto 140 characters in one message. In recent times smartphones have evolved and online messaging apps made text message almost redundant in our day-to-day lives.
Twitter did work on shortening links to reduce character count, but even these take about 23 characters and leave users only with 117 characters usable text.
As a workaround, users would tweet the same story in multiple tweets which could break the flow of the communication. Photos also would take up characters and leave the users with less characters to express. Many celebrities have shown resentment on the social media website for following an unnecessary rule.
It is also important to note that tweets are supposed to be short messages and one of the quickest ways to communicate with twitteratis out there. Increasing the limit to greater than 300 characters could also make Twitter lose its purpose, something users are not able to grasp.
Increasing character count would lead to long paragraphs and sentences, that would make the service less distinct from other social media companies.
If the photos and links are no longer going to be counted, users would be able to extract the maximum juice out of the tiny character limit available. You can see your favourite celebrities and fashion stars tweeting about their holiday in the Bahamas while still articulating their excitement on a tweet.
And yes, this also means more photos and links making your Twitter timeline more colorful than ever!
Source: Mint
