Twitter doubles its 140-character tweet limit to 280

In order to let people share their thoughts without any inhibition or limit, Twitter is testing the 280-character limit for tweets. The new character limit is double the previous one. "When people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people Tweeting — which is awesome!" the company said in a blog post.

A study conducted by Twitter found that 9 percent of users who tweet in English use the full 140-character limit, suggesting they’ve been forced to chop down a longer tweet to make it fit. In comparison, only 0.4 percent of tweets in Japanese use the full limit with the average length reaching only 15 characters.

"We understand since many of you have been Tweeting for years, there may be an emotional attachment to 140 characters - we felt it, too," the company added. "But we tried this, saw the power of what it will do, and fell in love with this new, still brief, constraint."

This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu

— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017

By moving to 280 characters, Twitter appears to be striking a balance in giving users more room to express themselves without sacrificing the short bursts of communication that have made its service an instrumental platform for disseminating breaking news. The change will initially be available to a small, randomized but representative group of Twitter users on iOS, Android and desktop web. The test is not expected to last long — only weeks — before Twitter plans to make a decision regarding a broader rollout.