Twitter Will Stretch Its 140-Character Limit
By Melony Roy and David Goldman
PHILADELPHIA (CBS/CNN) -- Rumors have persisted for months that Twitter was looking to move beyond its 140-character limit.
You will soon be able to fit a little more into your tweets.
It's technically not an expansion of its character limit but under Twitter's new rules -- photos, videos, GIFs, polls and quoted tweets will no longer count toward the character limit and user handles in replies will also be excluded.
"This will make having conversations on Twitter easier and more straightforward," said Todd Sherman, Twitter's senior product manager, in a blog post. "No more penny-pinching your words to ensure they reach the whole group."
Twitter is also adding another long-requested feature: the ability to quote and retweet your own tweets.
Tweets that begin with user handles (@username) will now show in timelines the same way as other tweets — meaning users will no longer need to preface these tweets with a period or other character in order for their followers to see it.
The company also hinted at more upcoming features.
"In addition to the changes outlined above, we have plans to help you get even more from your Tweets," Sherman said. "We're exploring ways to make existing uses easier and enable new ones."
Twitter has been rumored to be expanding its character count beyond 140 characters for many months. CEO Jack Dorsey has shot down those persistent rumors.
"That concept of brevity, speed and live conversation -- being able to think of something and put it out to the world instantly -- that's what's most important," said Dorsey in a prepared statement on Tuesday. "As long as things are fast, easy, simple and expressive, we're going to look at what we can do to make Twitter a better experience."
Many Twitter users have come to like the 140-character count. But others have found it too burdensome, posting photos of longer text or launching "tweetstorms" when they want to say something that doesn't fit small chunks of text.
The 140-character count was created to allow tweets to be send over SMS text messages. SMS has a 160-character count, so Twitter made its limit 20 characters shorter to allow for @names.
Twitter has a passionate group of more than 300 million customers, but its growth has stagnated. In an attempt to boost Twitter's popularity, the company has been looking for ways to make its service simpler to use, while also matching some of the richer features offered by many of its social media competitors.
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