Though no official announcement has been made, reliable sources report the Twitter character limit will be expanding from 140.
Twitter users tired of cramming their messages into that 140-character limit may find relief on the way. The social media platform famed for its brevity is considering the possibility of allowing longer tweets.
While Twitter has yet to make an official announcement, CEO Jack Dorsey alluded to the possibility in a tweet of his own after news about the possible upgrade broke.
“We’ve spent a lot of time observing what people are doing on Twitter, and we see them taking screenshots of text and tweeting it,” he wrote. “Instead, what if that text … was actually text? Text that could be searched. Text that could be highlighted.”
Explaining that such a move would add more utility and power for users, Dorsey stopped short of confirming that a potential new 10,000-character limit is on the launch pad. He did promise, however, that Twitter has no intentions of being “shy about building more utility and power” into the platform.
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Sources close to the company told tech news website Re/code that Twitter’s plans involve a target launch toward the end of the first quarter. The new character limit would reportedly rise to 10,000 characters, which mirrors the limit set on the platform’s direct messaging product.
While no official launch date is set, sources also report that tweets won’t change in appearance. Instead, those who want to see extended content will have to click on individual tweets to expand them. That enables the Twitter look and feel users are familiar with to remain intact.
Whether the move will help Twitter climb out of the slump it’s been experiencing as of late remains unclear. The company has been making bold moves to re-engage current users, attract new ones and enhance earnings. The results have been mixed.
Despite a 2015 third quarter revenue gain of 58%, the company was still reeling from a net loss of $132 million, Engadget reported. News of the possible character expansion did nothing to bolster the company’s stock. At the end of the first week of January, the company’s stocks dropped to less than $20 a share. That’s a first since Twitter debuted for public trading more than two years ago.
