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Twitter’s 140-character limit leaves a lot of users aggravated. Although the platform has continuously developed over the years allowing you to add hashtags, vines, GIFs and polls to your tweets, the character limit has always been capped.

The reason behind the 140-character limit dates back to when it was launched in 2006. The platform ‘Twitr’ at the time was developed to be utilised on the web, but because of the rarity of mobile internet and the expense of hardware during that period tweets were exchanged via SMS instead. It’s because of this the length of a tweet is capped at 140-characters, as that’s all you could send in a text at one time.

Well, why would you develop your platform so it can include images and videos to tweets, but still leave the 140-character feature from 10 years ago? To which I have no answer for… There have been talks in the past for the development of a 10,000-character limit for tweets, but CEO Jack Dorsey has confirmed that Twitter is keeping the 140-character limit.

Tweet 3000 characters long

And I’m glad. However, Twitter announced back in May that ‘@names’, and media attachments such as videos, images, GIF’s & Polls will no longer take up any of the valuable 140 characters you’re restricted to.

As for someone that tweets regularly it allows for a lot more breathing space because replies, images and videos can take up a lot of your characters. However, if you fit under that criteria then you’re in luck because Twitter has begun to roll out the changes this week.

You can now add images to tweets without it taking up characters;

You can now add GIFs without it taking up characters;

Tweet-with-GIF

You can also add polls without it taking up characters;

Tweet-with-Poll-1

I can expect the rest of the changes to be introduced very soon!

It may not be the change everyone desired, but I can imagine it being a sigh of relief for people who use the platform on a daily basis. Hopefully, the improved user freedom will open doors for Twitter and increase it’s users base because I think it’s a really valuable platform that only needs a few refinements to compete with the likes of Facebook.

What are your thoughts on the changes? Let us now below

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About the author

Relative is a creative marketing agency run by brothers, Rob and Si Barlow. We really work on our relationships. It’s why we have client partners who have happily worked with us for years. Building strong connections is what we do – with our clients, and for them with their chosen audiences.

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