Report: Twitter Working on Extending 140 Character Limit By End of Q1

[engine]

This 140 character limit was probably always under review, but it seems Twitter's looking at this much more seriously with an indication it may launch something before the end of Q1.

The test, as it's understood, retains the tweet's 140 character limit, until a user clicks to reveal the extended text of the tweet.

There is no official launch date set in stone, these sources say. It’s also possible the character limit could fluctuate before it rolls out the final product, which people inside Twitter refer to as “Beyond 140.” Report: Twitter Working on Extending 140 Character Limit By End of Q1 [recode.net]

Twitter's @Jack [twitter.com...]

Earlier
Report: Twitter Considers a New Way to Extend the 140 Character Limit [webmasterworld.com]

How would you use it?

[Rumbas]

Interesting. However I wonder if it will dilute the whole idea of twitter? It seems it's getting turned into a blogging platform rather than a easy to read and comprehend social media? If the users will need to click "read more" on a lot of posts, the purpose kind of disappears imo.

Interesting though, not sure how I will embrace this..

[EditorialGuy]

Facebook is trying to become the new AOL. Maybe Twitter is trying to become the new CompuServe?

[engine]

By extending the text limit, potentially, it'll be locking users into twitter's micro blogging platform, rather than them heading off site.

[JS_Harris]

This is a mistake, part of the reason celebrities liked Twitter is because it was a short, quick way to get some news out. If longer posts become the norm you may as well put that content on a site you own and just link to it from Twitter.

This is the first step in a bigger move towards being a content provider. 140 characters is too little to gain much traction as a valuable url from a search engine point of view but longer posts might get some traction. Again, bad idea as it moves away from what Twitter is loved for towards something we already have a million of.

Perhaps Twitter feels they don't have a choice? Such is what happens when a cool site needs to answer to shareholders, imo.

[lucy24]

<tangent>
Is it actually 140 characters or 140 bytes? This is slightly obvious but, ahem, never occurred to me until I recently read the fine print in a cell-phone manual.
</tangent>

[Panthro]

Twitter about to get a lot more annoying.

[mcneely]

Cheap and easy down and dirty blogging platforms seem to be the order of the day, and it seems that advertisers just can't seem to get enough of it --

Nobody wants to take the time anymore to blog - unless of course, they can drop in and drop out to the likes of G+, Facebook, and now soon, Twitter.

Soon, Twitter is going to be a re-hash of all of the garbage that G+ and Facebook already are -- It just makes sense really, in that Twitter doesn't want to miss out on using all of the playground toys that G+ and Facebook are playing on.

A required limited amount of characters gleans the best and the brightest from amongst us -- It requires us to really think on our feet -- Facebook, for instance, went from being fun to being a slog when it expanded it's character limits -- I see Twitter as wanting to do the same thing.

Smamvertisers Rejoice - me thinks -- as Twitter strives to become just as dull and boring as G+ and Facebook are ---

[JS_Harris]

I agree, keeping things short and concise was a Twitter strong point by design, who wants to read long posts on Twitter, or anywhere? Prediction: Twitter will lose "market share" to Instagram who are doing a better job at staying true to their name. I see celebrities moving to Instagram quite a bit right now.

[graeme_p]

If longer posts become the norm you may as well put that content on a site you own and just link to it from Twitter.

The best analysis I have read suggests Twitter are hoping for the opposite - to keep users on the site/in the app instead of following links out.

[mcneely]

to keep users on the site

And look how Twitter traffic fell off into the Loo upon the introduction of "rich" content -- People still don't have the time to sit on their phones, burning bandwidth, watching video.

Twitter is a sign post -- It points the way -- People are in too much of a rush to sit there and read through 55 lines of text - The light usually turns green before you can even get to the 4th line, never minding the 55th or the 100th line. And as far as directly participating? Well, my thumbs can barely get to line 5 before someone behind me leans on their horn --

Short, fast, and sweet - anything else is rubbish.

Slogging through the mire of todays article and advertising wastelands are more suited for the Laptop and the PC ... Mobile traffic comes in for a quick byte, not the full course - Type a line, post a pic -- Boom, you're done. Not too unlike a hot date in primary school -- But then again, who am I to say?

Twitter will be Twitter, and soon we'll see it morph off into irrelevancy just like most all of the other cheap date platforms have done.

[ken_b]

If the goal is to keep users on Twitter, then I'd guess we can look forward to restrictions on outbound links.

Personally I use T more like a headline news site. If I see an interesting tweet with an outbound link I often follow up with a look at the target site if I can find it without clicking the link (trust issues?). The sites I already know and trust I click thru to.

[JS_Harris]

Bottom line - twitter is an instant messenger app! I wish them well in becoming something else, hopefully they find their new calling card, but longer posts isn't it imo.

What MADE twitter is that celebrities and companies jumped on board early. "Visit us on Facebook AND Twitter". That little official celebrity checkmark for official accounts was golden, right up until people realized that most celebs pay others to post for them. Celebs and companies alike focused on Facebook(the long version) and Twitter(the instant short version) to get messages out.

I don't see as many companies promoting both Facebook and Twitter anymore, many have dropped Twitter and/or replaced it with Instagram where they can more easily display images. In fact I watched a football game last Sunday that promoted ONLY Instagram. Twitter becoming Facebook solves nothing, both need to provide what their users want. I know people complained that 140 characters were too few but they wanted 150 or 160 characters, not 10,000.

Most celebs don't even read the 140 people send them unless they spot an opportunity to self promote, do you think they'll read the 10,000? My prediction is that we will now see a lot of "copy pasta" of posts to both Facebook and Twitter, there won't be a short version and long version anymore. Twitter is really playing with fire here and I don't see the upside.

When places like Monday Night Football no longer promote their Twitter accounts live on air for free that will mark the beginning of the end no matter what Twitter does, it feels like 3rd and long for twitter right now. It's felt that way since they, as an instant messenger, went public on the stock market imo. Twitter stock ended at a 1 year low today, it lost almost 10% today alone... becoming a blogging platform is not what people wanted from Twitter.

[theguardian.com...]

The only answer, which I don’t think is feasible, is to say, ‘You know what, we’re going to be the best damn 300 million-monthly-active-user [service] we think we can be,’ and not aim for Facebook-like scale.

Wrong! If you don't want to become classmates you stop trying to become Facebook and get back to being the short game! Oh, and while you're at it, do something about the 500 followers all using the same image header trying to sell me twitter popularity, thanks.

[keyplyr]

In theory: I like the idea of extending the 140 character limit since I often have to cannibalize my tweets until they fit.

In practice: I will have to wait and see how this will end-up being used by everyone and how it will affect the dynamic.

[Mark558]

People will tweet everything becose they have more room so will spammers