Twitter testing 280 character limit for tweets

After raising the character limit on direct messages in 2015, Twitter is now toying with the idea of bumping up the limit on tweets.

Twitter says that it’s going to test out a 280 character limit for tweets, double the current limit. This feature is only available to a small group of users “in languages impacted by cramming”, which Twitter says is all languages except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

As for why it’s considering this change, Twitter explains, “Our research shows us that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people Tweeting in English,” with 9 percent of all tweets in English hitting the 140 character limit. The company also says that users tweet more when they don’t have to cram their tweet into 140 characters and have room to spare.

The 140-character limit has been around since Twitter launched 11 years ago, and it’s one of the services defining characteristics. It’d be strange to see that limit bumped up, but getting users to tweet more is important for Twitter, so if the company’s research is accurate then it makes sense that it’d test out a longer limit.

What do you think about Twitter increasing its tweet limit to 280 characters?

Twitter testing 280 character limit for tweets originally posted at http://phonedog.com