Twitter Is Expanding Tweets To 280 Characters
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Twitter is expanding, literally. The company is now allowing users to tweet up to 280 characters, instead of 140.
Twitter had been testing longer tweets with some people since late September but announced Tuesday in a blog post that it is now giving the feature to everyone.
Everyone, that is, except those tweeting in Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages.
According to BusinessInsider.com, Twitter decided to permanently expand its iconic 140-character restraint after users with access to the test spent more time on the platform and received more engagement, like retweets and likes, from their longer tweets.
"During the first few days of the test many people Tweeted the full 280 limit because it was new and novel, but soon after behavior normalized," wrote Twitter product manager Aliza Rosen in the blog post. "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."
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean-speaking users aren't getting access to the expanded limit because "cramming is not an issue in these languages," per Twitter.