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Report: Twitter to stop counting photos, links in 140 character limit
Twitter, Inc. is set to undertake its biggest shakeup in years, by no longer counting pictures and links as part of its 140 character count, according to a report published Monday.
Quoting “a person familiar with the matter,” Bloomberg says the decision to change the character count has been finalized and the change could be implemented within the next two weeks.
As Twitter currently stands, a link, even after Twitter has shortened it, takes up 23 characters, while a photo takes up 24 characters, leaving only 93 characters for a Twitter user to share their thoughts if both a link and picture are shared at the same time.
Twitter’s 140 character limit, while long praised as a positive for the service (brevity, after all, being the soul of wit), was originally imposed by Twitter due to the service in its early days having a focus on SMS TXT messaging. In 2016, there is no longer any technical reason for the limit.
No surprise
The change to the way Twitter counts characters is not entirely unexpected, although the change is far less radical than a report back in January that suggested that Twitter was considering increasing the 140 character limit to 10,000 characters, a move that would have fundamentally changed Twitter for the worse.
For Twitter, the change comes at a time where the company continues to struggle with user engagement; while as of their last quarter they had actually started adding users again (be it not that many) Twitter continues to struggle with engagement.
As Social Media Today aptly puts it:
Today’s announcement comes as Twitter looks for something – anything – to help them boost engagement and get their engagement and growth rates back on track.
The change in and of itself though will unlikely be noticed by the vast majority of Twitter users, and certainly will do little in helping Twitter addressing its longer-term stagnation; a little bit of extra room to type does not make a renaissance cometh.
Twitter has neither confirmed not denied the report but expect an official announcement if not this week then early next week.
Image credit: mkhmarketing/Flickr/CC by 2.0
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