Twitter executive Biz Stone today said the company is testing the limits of how many characters will work in a single tweet.
“Originally, our constraint was 160 (limit of a text) minus username,” explained Stone. “For fairness, we chose 140.
Now texts are unlimited. Also, we realize that 140 isn’t fair — there are differences between languages. We’re testing the limits. Hello 280!” Some users will find they can now add 280 characters, double the number before, to individual posts.
Many view Twitter’s previous 140-character count as an unnecessary limitation while others view it as a service-defining characteristic. The company has already made moves to expand the number of characters available within tweets by removing usernames and links from the character count altogether.
Twitter is testing expanded tweet lengths with a small number of users before rolling it out across the service. It didn’t say how long it might be in testing.
