Twitter wants people to ‘easily express’ themselves; tests 280 character limit

Key Highlights

• Twitter is testing 280 character limit tweets.
• The facility will be first launched as a pilot project before opening up to the greater majority.
• Tweeting in other languages can take more characters to state the same sentiment.

Finding the 140 character limit a little restraining, Twitter wants people to ‘easily’ express themselves. The micro-blogging website in a blog post on Tuesday announced that it has been testing a 280 character limit tweet posts.

“We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, 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),” said Aliza Rosen, Product Manager and kuhiro Ihara Software Engineer at Twitter.

“Although this is only available to a small group right now, we want to be transparent about why we are excited to try this,” the post said.

As per Twitter’s findings only 9% of all tweets done in English hit the 140 character limit while 0.4% of Japanese tweets hit the same limit.

“Most Japanese Tweets are 15 characters while most English Tweets are 34. Our research shows us that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people Tweeting in English, but it is not for those Tweeting in Japanese. Also, in all markets, when people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people Tweeting,” Twitter said.

The company will first try out the 280 character limit in a pilot launch with a small group of people before extending it to the larger public. “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.”

Making a case for its 280 character limit the company posted a timeline of the same tweet in different languages.

"What matters now is we clearly show why this change is important, and prove to you all it’s better. Give us some time to learn and confirm (or challenge!) our ideas," Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter said in a tweet.

“We understand since many of you have been Tweeting for years, there may be an emotional attachment to 140 characters – we felt it, too. But we tried this, saw the power of what it will do, and fell in love with this new, still brief, constraint,” Twitter said.