The shift implies two key trends related to Twitter’s character limit change. After the character limit change in November 2017, Twitter observed that 12 percent of English tweets reached the past limit of 140 characters, while only one percent of tweets hit the new 280 character limit and only 5% of tweets surpassed 190 characters. Interestingly enough, when given the opportunity to use more characters to express their thoughts, most Twitter users don’t use the extra space.
Results from the extra characters allowed One big concern was that if Twitter users have a hard time fitting all their words into such a small 140 character limit, they may be less likely to actually tweet. So how did the change from 140 to 280 characters affect the social activity and communication on Twitter? When character limit change was first announced, some users were enthusiastic about having more characters with which to express their thoughts, while others found it contrary to Twitter’s brief and concise nature.ĭespite the mixed feelings of Twitter users about the new character limit, the change did in fact succeed in bringing more conversation and more engagement to the online social media platform. While language parity was one important reason for the character limit change, Twitter also acknowledged that the small 140 character limit was restricting the ability of its users to express themselves on the platform. Other reasons for a character limit change In order to create greater parity, Twitter extended the character limit for English tweets by double, while Asian language tweets remained capped at 140 characters. Twitter found that approximately 9 percent of English tweets reached the 140 character limit, compared to only 0.4 percent of Japanese tweets. In Chinese, "Good morning" represented by the Chinese characters 早上好, are only 3 characters.Īs you can see it would be unnecessary to expand the tweet character limit in languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean to 280 characters because they are already able to say a lot with less characters. A tweet in English could be twice as long as the same tweet in Japanese.įor example, the phrase "Good morning" has 12 characters in English including the space in the middle. In November 2017, Twitter made the unprecedented decision to expand its character limit from 140 to 280 characters, citing a disparity in tweet length between different languages as the primary motivation for its move. Different languages, different character limits Because SMS was limited by a 160 character limit, the first tweets were limited to a maximum length of 140 characters, with the remaining 20 reserved for the username.Īs Twitter became more popular and moved to a more versatile online website, the company decided to keep its 140 character limit, which soon became an essential feature of the worldwide social media platform.
Why does Twitter have a 280 character limit?īut why does Twitter have its 280 character limit and how does it shape the online activity of the social media platform?Īt the time of its inception in July 2006, Twitter, originally called Twttr, was an SMS text-based service designed for groups of friends to keep tabs on each other through periodic status updates. It’s hard to imagine the internet without the constant buzz of Twitter, the popular social media platform on which hundreds of millions of short soundbites from politicians, celebrities, and other online users are shared out each day.Īs a platform known for brevity and concision, Twitter’s 280 character limit is arguably as much a defining feature of its brand as the little blue bird for which is the website’s iconic logo.
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Users with a free account are still limited to 280 characters. UPDATE: As of FebruTwitter users subscribed to Twitter Blue are allowed 4,000 characters per tweet.
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