Since Twitter launched in 2006, they have had a limit on characters for each update or status (also known as Tweets) that users can post. That limit has always been 140-characters. There was a time where there was a limit on characters in Direct Messages or DM’s. Twitter has since changed Direct Messages limit to about 10,000 characters. There were rumors that they may change the limit for Tweets, but that was met with a lot of negativity. So Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, opted to keep the limit at 140 characters. However they have made a few changes to that limit.
In the coming months, there will be a number of exceptions made for Tweets. These include replies and media attachments. So now when you are replying to someone, those characters won’t be taken out of your character limit. Additionally, attaching pictures and videos also will not count against the 140 character limit either. A couple other changes includes the ability to Retweet and Quote Tweet yourself. Now you may wonder why this is needed. Well by Quote Tweeting one of your Tweets, you are able to go back to a Tweet that you may have posted months ago and add a comment. Having all the information there in one Tweet will keep your followers caught up on what you’re actually talking about. The next change is in regards to replies. Currently, if you want to reply to someone you would start the Tweet as “@androidheadline…” however if that would only be seen by your and that person’s followers. If you want everyone to see it, you’d need to do “.@androidheadline…”. They are getting rid of the need to add a character before the @ symbol. This also means you’ll have more characters to work with now.
Twitter has not said when these changes will be available, just that it will be “in the coming months”. The reasoning for announcing it now is so that developers can update their apps to work with these new exceptions for Tweets. These changes should make Twitter a bit better for everyone. Especially when having a conversation with tons of people in there.