Twitter to Drop Handles and Media Attachments From 140-Character Limit

Twitter announced today that it will be making a number of expected changes to simplify tweets over the coming months.

First and foremost, when replying to a tweet, Twitter handles such as @MacRumors will no longer count toward the 140-character limit. Media attachments, like photos, GIFs, videos, polls, and Quote Tweets, will also no longer be counted.

The changes should provide Twitter users, including brands and websites, with more characters for actual text and article headlines.

Meanwhile, new non-reply tweets that begin with a username will now reach all of a user's followers, eliminating the need to use the ".@" convention to broadcast a tweet widely. Last, Twitter users will be able to Retweet and Quote Tweet their own tweets.

Twitter expects the changes to have a significant impact on tweets, so the microblogging service aims to provide its developer partners with time to make any needed updates to products built using the Twitter API.

Tag: Twitter

Top Rated Comments

(View all)

ipedro

43 months ago

The decision to drop the .@ convention is a bad decision. People have different groups of friends on Twitter. My Rugby frinds don't need to know what I'm saying to my friends from when I was at or vice versa. Neither of those groups will want to have the tweets I send to Photography friends suddenly forced into their timelines. This will clog up peoples' timelines with stuff they're not interested in. Plus, it will become even easier for online trolls and bullies to whip up a frenzy by broadcasting their abuse to all their followers automatically. Twitter need to re-think this part o their proposed changes.

It's only for new tweets. If I tweet [USER=211291]@Gaspode67[/USER] should read more closely before commenting it'll reach all of my followers because it's simply a tweet that begins with a handle, not a reply. If I reply to a tweet with [USER=211291]@Gaspode67[/USER] ok, meet you on the pitch then it will not show to all of my followers unless they follow both of us, as it worked before.

With these updates, Twitter is eliminating the need to be a twitter geek with knowledge of insider tricks in order to use the service. A lot of this twitter code turns people off. And even though I've been on Twitter from the beginning and know all of these tricks, I'll appreciate a cleaner timeline with less code and more content.

Rating: 2 Votes

petertretyakov

43 months ago

class Tweet < ActiveRecord::Base
validates :content, length: { maximum: 150 }
end

You're welcome ))

Rating: 2 Votes

Gaspode67

43 months ago

Rating: 1 Votes

Sheza

43 months ago

I was going to say that's not how it works, but you're right. The .@ convention was perfectly fine, a part of Twitter culture.

Rating: 1 Votes

mms13

43 months ago

Sooooo theoretically you could spam @ mention every single user on twitter in a single tweet. This sounds like a pretty horrible idea.

Rating: 1 Votes

Brookzy

43 months ago

Headline would more accurately be "Twitter will drop...". Nothing happening for a few months.

EDIT: The article's headline has been revised since I posted this. :P

Rating: 1 Votes