Twitter is expanding the amount of characters you can tweet – from the usual 140 to 280.
But it isn’t just about people wanting to say more things in a single tweet.
Tweeting in English, French or Spanish it’s not difficult to hit the 140 character limit. But tweeting in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese you can say so much more.
“We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter,” Aliza Rosen, Twitter product manager says. “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).”
The feature isn’t available to everyone yet.
“Although we feel confident about our data and the positive impact this change will have, we want to try it out with a small group of people before we make a decision to launch to everyone,” Rosen explains.
“What matters most is that this works for our community – we will be collecting data and gathering feedback along the way. We’re hoping fewer Tweets run into the character limit, which should make it easier for everyone to Tweet.”
Rosen insists Twitter is still about brevity, and “that is something we will never change”.