After a lot of chatter about Twitter removing the 140 character text limit, another news says that Twitter will soon stop counting photos and links in its 140-character limit for tweets.
If sources are to be believed the change could happen in the next two weeks. Despite Twitter’s shortened links, they do currently take up 23 characters.
The idea behind the 140-character limit originally came before the advent of smartphones. Twitter adopted it because it was a way to send Tweets while fitting all the information within a mobile text message - a common way for sending Tweets when the service debuted in 2006.
It now plans to bring about more flexibility on the site, the exclusion of counting photos and links can be on such step. In January, the Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said that the company was looking for new ways to display text on Twitter, and would experiment based on how the people use the service. For example, some people tweet screenshots of longer text in articles, or send many tweets one after the other to tell a story.
Though, there have been talks of removing the limit, but executives have time and again emphasised on how Twitter is a destination for live events and discussion. Hence, this recent rumour if true, removing the character requirement for links and photos may encourage users to add more media to their posts.
Here's how twitter reacts to the decision:
Twitter is considering making links and photos not count in the 140 character limit, according to Bloomberg. Smart compromise move, I think.
— Will Goodbody (@willgoodbody) May 16, 2016
This is great they should have done it 100 years ago https://t.co/YWyd6uZ7lA
— Farhad Manjoo (@fmanjoo) May 16, 2016
Twitter is going to remove photos from the character limit?
I can't imagine how I will mark this momentous event.— Ern Malley (@trewloy) May 17, 2016