Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last night hinted at an incoming change to the 140-character limit for which the social network has been known over the past decade. Dorsey mentioned that the limit has "become a beautiful constraint" over the years, but the company is aware of certain workarounds its fans are going through to break away from the rule.
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He points towards a possibility in the near future for the site to support full-bodied text tweets that are searchable and can be highlighted by users without a strict 140-character restriction. Back in August, Twitter removed the same limit from its private messaging system, and a month later new rumors about the possibility for the same move for traditional tweets began circling.
"At its core Twitter is public messaging. A simple way to say something, to anyone, that everyone in the world can see instantly. We've spent a lot of time observing what people are doing on Twitter, and we see them taking screenshots of text and tweeting it.
Instead, what if that text...was actually text? Text that could be searched. Text that could be highlighted. That's more utility and power. What makes Twitter, Twitter is its fast, public, live conversational nature. We will always work to to strengthen that. And by focusing on conversation and messaging, the majority of tweets will always be short and sweet and conversational!"
According to people familiar with Twitter's plans, speaking with Re/code, the project is referred to as "Beyond 140" and has a tentative launch window around the end of Q1 2016. Numbers that have been considered internally by the team range from 5,000 to 10,000 character limits, the latter of which would fall alongside the same restriction placed inside of private messages on the site.
The sources point to expandable actions for the new tweets that would keep timelines as tight and orderly as they appear with the current limit, but include an expandable prompt that would then showcase the tweet's full text when clicked. Recently, Twitter updated its site to allow full images to appear without being cut off, and changed the favoriting star to a heart.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)There have been a few times I would have liked to have had over 140, but... I either abbreviated or made 2 tweets
Can honestly say, I won't take the time to click and read a tweet that long, or even half that long
The appeal of Twitter is how easy it is to digest. This is going to ruin it. Heck, they have tried so hard to monetize, they should just charge per character over 140, that'll keep people from abusing it.
The 140-character limit is still useful: it promotes people keeping their tweets short, keeping each nugget digestible. Maybe they could raise it to 500 and keep that element of the service, but if they make it 5K/10K then I think they are dead. Twitter has trouble with new users because the signal/noise ratio is so poor, and allowing all messages to be longer is basically going to mean more noise.
That said, I basically never use Twitter. Sometimes I'll be curious - I'll think somebody on there may be able to spare some tickets to a game, or something. Then I go to twitter.com (I don't log in because I can't even remember what my account details are), and I can't see anything. I can't search public tweets, I can't see what's trending, nothing. It infuriates me every time. I've gone through their very long and dragging account setup process a few times, and I won't do it again.
Instead, they should stop counting links and photos as part of the character count.