Expressing yourself in 140 characters or less has almost become an art form, but it can also be incredibly restrictive in certain situations. Today, Twitter announced that they are playing with the 140 charterer rule.
Over the coming months Twitter is making changes to move beyond its 140 character limit without abandoning it entirely. For example, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) will no longer “use up” valuable characters.
Here is a full list of changes on deck from Twitter:
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Replies: When replying to a Tweet, @names will no longer count toward the 140-character count. This will make having conversations on Twitter easier and more straightforward, no more penny-pinching your words to ensure they reach the whole group.
- Media attachments: When you add attachments like photos, GIFs, videos, polls, or Quote Tweets, that media will no longer count as characters within your Tweet. More room for words!
- Retweet and Quote Tweet yourself: We’ll be enabling the Retweet button on your own Tweets, so you can easily Retweet or Quote Tweet yourself when you want to share a new reflection or feel like a really good one went unnoticed.
- Goodbye, .@: These changes will help simplify the rules around Tweets that start with a username. New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the ”.@” convention, which people currently use to broadcast Tweets broadly.) If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you will be able to Retweet it to signal that you intend for it to be viewed more broadly.
Links in posts will still count towards the 140 limit. But links will still count – a decision TechCrunch says “has its roots in making Twitter’s character counter more intuitive.”