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You ever find yourself scrolling through Twitter thinking to yourself, “Man, I really wish these idiots had double the space to spew their bullshit across the internet.” No? Me either. And apparently, no one else does … except for Twitter itself.
Last night, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the change, saying that the 140 character limit was just an “arbitrary limit” based on the 160 character SMS limit.
Twitter’s stock has been on the downturn for some time now, so this reeks of a desperation move to shake up the platform and bring people back to the service.
https://twitter.com/twitter/status/912783930431905797
via Twitter:
For example, when I Tweet in English, I quickly run into the 140 character limit and have to edit my Tweet down so it fits. Sometimes, I have to remove a word that conveys an important meaning or emotion, or I don’t send my Tweet at all. But when Iku Tweets in Japanese, he doesn’t have the same problem. He finishes sharing his thought and still has room to spare. This is because in languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese you can convey about double the amount of information in one character as you can in many other languages, like English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French.
We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, so we’re doing something new: we’re going to try out a longer limit, 280 characters, in languages impacted by cramming (which is all except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean).
Needless to say, not everyone was thrilled and Twitter had JOKES:
https://twitter.com/poniewozik/status/912787813069934592
https://twitter.com/TheEllenShow/status/912841022069022720
https://twitter.com/chrissyteigen/status/912792266204254208
https://twitter.com/BarstoolBigCat/status/912891431295029250
https://twitter.com/amirtibon/status/912786945188810752
https://twitter.com/SoVeryBritish/status/912970376325599232
But of course, Stephen Colbert put it best:
https://twitter.com/StephenAtHome/status/912857082940084224
