Did you know that Twitter is considering dropping the 140 character limit in tweets?
After around a day of speculation it seems the the social media giant is considering a new 10,000 character limit - the same change that was recently implemented for their Direct Messages.
Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey, also known as @jack, hasn't given any confirmation on the change, but has openly stated that the company is considering it.
"At its core Twitter is public messaging. A simple way to say something, to anyone, that everyone in the world can see instantly.
We didn't start Twitter with a 140 character restriction. We added that early on to fit into a single SMS message (160 characters).
It's become a beautiful constraint, and I love it! It inspires creativity and brevity. And a sense of speed. We will never lose that feeling.
We've spent a lot more time observing what people are doing on Twitter, and we see them taking screenshots of text and tweeting it.
Instead, what if that text...was actually text? Text that could be search. Text that could be highlighted. That's more utility and power.
What makes Twitter, Twitter is its fast, public, live conversational nature. We will always work to strengthen that. For every person around the world, in every language!
And by focusing on conversation and messaging, the majority of tweets will always be short and sweet and conversational!
We're not going to be shy about building more utility and power into Twitter for people. As long as it's consistent with what people want to do, we're going to explore it.
And as I said at #flight, if we decide to ship what we explore, we're telling developers well in advance, so they can prepare accordingly.
(Also: I love tweetstorms! Those won't go away.)"
What does this mean for my business or organisation?
Right now, nothing. Should this idea become reality, you may soon have the ability to post longer, more descriptive messages to discuss your business and interests with the world.
This is a huge change for Twitter to consider as the fundamental functions and characteristics of the micro-blogging platform have remained relatively consistent and static throughout its life.
However, the suggested change seems to have created a stir on the network, with lots of people tweeting their thoughts about it:
Twitter is going to allow up to 10,000 characters per tweet? Why the unnecessary change no one wanted? Twitter purchased by George Lucas?
— Jason Anarchy (@DrinkingQuest) January 5, 2016
My money says Tweet length will not increase to 10,000 characters, mainly because it would destroy Twitter. Let me explain. First of all....
— Adam (@7nightstorock) January 6, 2016
10,000 characters on Twitter is way too much. How about 20 additional characters and an edit function instead? #Twitter10k
— Dave (@dave2step) January 6, 2016
If @Twitter ups the limit to 10,000 characters/tweet, I'm pretty sure I would stop using #Twitter or, at least, login much less often.
— Ken A. Bugajski (@drkensf) January 6, 2016
10,000 characters = 10,000 reasons to leave twitter !
— Bikalpa Pokhrel (@engine_neear) January 6, 2016
And in case you were wondering what a 10,000 character tweet may look like, take a look at this:
Let us know what you think of the rumoured changes by tweeting to us on @Cosmic_UK, however for now, you'll need to keep your response to 140 characters or less!