Twitter rolls out 280-character limit to all user accounts

Twitter is extending the character limit on tweets for all users to 280 characters, twice the current length of messages. The social media company started trialled the new length for some users at the end of September, saying it wanted to help users get around the “constraints” posed by certain languages.

Tweets have been limited to 140 characters since Twitter’s inception in 2006, founding the platform’s reputation for brevity.

Under the 140 character restriction, some 9 per cent of tweets used up every possible character, Twitter said in a blog post. Once users were given 280 characters, just 1 per cent of tweets hit the upper limit. “During the first few days of the test many people tweeted the full 280 limit because it was new and novel, but soon after, behaviour normalised,” Aliza Rosen, Twitter’s product manager said.

“We saw when people needed to use more than 140 characters, they tweeted more easily and more often. But importantly, people tweeted below 140 most of the time and the brevity of Twitter remained.” Twitter is used by 330m monthly active users worldwide. It reported a 14 per cent year-on-year rise in daily active users in the third financial quarter of the year.

However, users tweeting in Japanese, Korean and Chinese will do so within the 140-character limit. Attempting to edit phrases and cram characters into a tweet is not an issue for these languages, Ms Rosen added. “In fact, these languages have always been able to say more with their Tweets because of the density of their writing systems.”

Despite the expansion, Twitter remained dedicated to brevity, she said when announcing the trial. “Tweets get right to the point with the information or thoughts that matter. That is something we will never change.”

Earlier this year, the social media site made all the 140 characters available to users replying to tweets. It also removed character limits from Direct Messages sent privately between users and stopped counting images and other media attached to tweets as part of the character limit in an attempt to improve the service.