The changes were announced by Twitter back in May after months of speculation. This week, news site The Verge independently announced that Twitter plans to launch the feature on September 19. The revision of Twitter’s famous 140-character limit will bring more lenient restrictions that better reflect the way people tend to use the platform.
The changes will enable you to mention other users, reply to a tweet or attach media such as a photo, video, GIF or poll without consuming some of your 140 characters. The update will end some of the most common user annoyances on Twitter. It can be hard to have public conversations on the service because each message reply uses up characters and shortens the maximum length of your message.
Twitter is also removing the “.@” convention to address other users on its platform. Currently, starting a tweet with the “@” symbol and a username sends the tweet as a private message to the user. However, people more commonly want the tweet to be publicly visible, so they use a period as their first character.
This can be alienating to new users, making it harder to get to grips with Twitter. On September 19, it will be abolished. All tweets will be posted publicly unless you use the separate Direct Message feature.
Twitter has been working on the update for several months. It’s been a quarter of a year since it announced the changes, indicating it’s been taking its time to refine the feature and get it ready to launch. Twitter had previously been thought to be eradicating the 140-character limit altogether. However, user complaints about the loss of the defining characteristic are said to have convinced CEO Jack Dorsey to focus on a streamlining of the current implementation instead.
“So, you can already do a lot in a Tweet, but we want you to be able to do even more,” Twitter said in May. “In the coming months we’ll make changes to simplify Tweets including what counts toward your 140 characters, so for instance, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) will no longer “use up” valuable characters.”
The changes should make it easier for new users to engage on Twitter. The platform has been stagnating for a prolonged period of time and is struggling to attract new people. Analysts have often blamed the company’s problems on a lack of defining features that target young audiences. The frustrations and oddities of Twitter’s existing characteristics also play a part though. By erasing them, Twitter will be placing itself in a better position to return to growth in the future.
The solution appears to be beneficial to all sides. Twitter can broaden its appeal and make itself easier to use without overhauling its entire concept, allowing users to publicly post short, constrained messages. While it won’t solve the company’s problems on its own, it is a step in the right direction.
