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In a big change to its policy of brevity on the platform, Twitter is now extending its character limit for US premium users.
Twitter is now allowing US subscribers of its Blue service to post tweets with up to 4,000 characters.
Announced yesterday (8 February), all users in the US subscribed to Twitter Blue – the social platform’s paid premium offering – will be able to tweet up to 4,000 characters, well above the usual 280-character limit.
Most other standard functions of tweeting will continue to apply around posting pictures, using hashtags and creating polls. However, if you write these longer tweets you will not have the option of saving to drafts or scheduling to send later.
“Need more than 280 characters to express yourself? We know that lots of you do,” the Twitter Blue account tweeted yesterday. “And while we love a good thread, sometimes you just want to tweet everything all at once. We get that.”
Even though the new feature will allow longer tweets, the service confirmed that timelines are not set to get any longer and will not require more scrolling. Long tweets will be capped at 280 characters in timelines with a See more option to read the whole tweet – similar to Facebook.
need more than 280 characters to express yourself?
we know that lots of you do… and while we love a good thread, sometimes you just want to Tweet everything all at once. we get that.
so we're introducing longer Tweets! you're gonna want to check this out. tap this 👉… https://t.co/lge9udRzLE
— Twitter Blue (@TwitterBlue) February 8, 2023
The service also confirmed that while only Twitter Blue subscribers can post longer tweets, all users will be able to view, reply, retweet and quote tweet them. Only subscribers, however, will be able to reply and quote tweet with up to 4,000 characters.
Twitter first introduced the 280-character limit in November 2017 as a move to encourage people to tweet longer and more often. The previous character limit was a meagre 140 to ensure brevity on the app – one of the cornerstones of the platform at the time.
Just after Twitter introduced its latest character limit for Blue subscribers, many users complained of technical issues on the website. Reports suggest that users trying to tweet were shown a message that read: “You are over the daily limit for sending tweets”.
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