Twitter To Make Tweets Longer, Sort Of

Since its inception, the defining characteristic of Twitter was its limited characters. These days, users only have 140 characters to compose their Tweets, which forces them to either send multiple posts or keep their message concise. However, the social media app is now making some changes that will allow for slightly longer messages by tweaking the system a bit.

Twitter will not be extending the number of characters that users will be able to use, Android Headlines reports, but will instead stop counting certain elements in the message. This means gifs, pictures, videos, and even quotes from other users will no longer use up characters, thus making the messages just a tiny bit longer.

When replying, usernames won’t be counted either, so users won’t have to worry about composing inadequate Tweets to people who have absurdly long pseudonyms. Then again, this development isn’t technically anything new since Twitter announced that they may eventually apply these changes since as far back as last May. At the time, the social media site did not reveal when the update would be released.

There’s no telling if all of the changes will happen at one time or if they will happen gradually. Video media might be given priority, for example, while leaving the rest for a later date.

The Verge reports having made its own independent confirmation of this development, stating that the updates will take effect on September 19th. The publication also noted how Twitter had earlier made plans to simply extend the 140 character limit to something that will really give its users the legroom to compose the messages they want. However, the current number of characters allows Tweets to fit SMS messages, and so the social media site had to backtrack on these plans.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey promised that the social network will continue to be as creative as it has always been. While keeping the things that supposedly make Twitter great, his team will also work to implement new features.