China's Microblogging Service, Sina Weibo, Tests Removal of 140 Character Limit

[engine]

China's microblogging service, i'm sure, has been watching twitter's moves to end the 140-character limit, and according to this report, Sina Weibo is to test this on selected accounts from 28 January, and to roll it out by 28 February. I'm sure twitter will be watching this one closely, too.

Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo will remove its 140-character limit starting Jan. 28 on its developer platform, its CEO confirmed on Wednesday China's Microblogging Service, Sina Weibo, Tests Removal of 140 Character Limit [news.xinhuanet.com]

On Wednesday, a snapshot of a letter from Weibo Open Platform to its developers was widely circulated on Weibo, where it said the new format is expected to be tested among "senior users" from Jan. 28 and open to all users by Feb. 28.

[bill]

You can write a lot more in 140 characters in Chinese than you can in English, so the expansion is going to give them a lot more room to write. I haven't seen much press about the Chinese users' reactions to this yet though.

[lucy24]

That's why I asked elsewhere if it's really 140 characters or 140 bytes. But even within 140 bytes (er ... 46 words and a smiley?) you can say a heck of a lot.