Yesterday, Twitter announced a fundamental change to how we tweet on the network and it is regarding the 140 character rule.
Say more about what's happening! Rolling out now: photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets no longer count toward your 140 characters. pic.twitter.com/I9pUC0NdZC
— Twitter (@twitter) September 19, 2016
For a decade now, we have been confined to making sure whatever we tweet (which includes text and links to photos or videos) is less than or equal to 140 characters and can be understood by our audiences. This needed a change thanks to the addition of links on the network from their internal media service or from articles and their new polling feature. Now your texts can go upto 140 characters while the characters from your links won’t be considered in the total character count.
You can peg this move by the company to make sure that you can now tweet more as part of their broader strategy which involved focusing on 5 priorities: Refinement of their core service, live streaming video, creators and influencers, safety and developers. Jack Dorsey said in the company’s 4th quarter results in February this year and this case of allowing people to add longer text can be seen as an improvement in their “core service.”
We have seen the company focusing on improving each and every part of the priorities mentioned like the addition of the live Periscope button on the mobile apps to make people start live broadcasts easily. Twitter understands that influencers have a big part in making sure people log in on Twitter and that is why they introduced a generous monetizing opportunity for them. Safety is an issue that has plagued Twitter for a while now but they have been strides like revamping the blocking feature , sharing block listst or reporting several tweets at once. Not forgetting developers, Twitter made strides with their Hello World tour where they even visited Kenya and announced hackathon in conjunction with iHub.
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