Twitter may be improving character count in coming days

13 Sep 2016

Plans to reorganise how Twitter measures 140 characters in tweets, announced back in May, could be finally rolled out by the end of this week, according to reports in the US.

As the summer began, Twitter officially announced that added media – like videos and images – would no longer be counted as part of its strict 140-character count.

Gifs, polls and @names, too, would no longer go towards the relatively restrictive character limit that has proven one of the main appeals, and gripes, of the worldwide social media network.

Twitter

Tweaks and improvements

No date was given on the planned roll-out, until now.

According to The Verge, citing two sources familiar with the project, 19 September is pencilled in as the start date of a global release – though these plans could change.

“We’re always going to look for opportunities to make tweets a lot more expressive, and enable people to say what they want to say,” said Dorsey back in May.

“As long as things are fast, easy, simple and expressive, we’re going to look at what we can do to make Twitter a better experience.”

Plenty of plans

In August, the company ramped up its Moments feature – direct competition for Snapchat and Instagram in the user-curated story-telling sphere of social media.

Elsewhere, the company’s live-streaming project is building, with reports last month of a partnership with Apple TV.

Having spent $10m on a deal to stream 10 NFL games this season – which follows similar deals in Europe to stream both the Europa League and Champions League finals – Twitter’s eyeing up more screen time.

The company’s core service remains tweets, so massaging the code to allow its 313m active monthly users more space to fit additional words into their messages should prove very popular, whenever it comes on board.

Main Twitter image via Worawee Meepian/Shutterstock

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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