Saying what you want to say in just 140 characters is quite a task on Twitter. However, the company is now experimenting with the character limit and soon you will have more characters to express yourself on Twitter.
The company is now testing a larger 280 character limit with limited number of users. This is the first time Twitter is expanding the 140 character limit. “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”, Twitter said in a blog post. Languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese let you convey about double the amount of information in one character as you can in many other languages, like English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French. Twitter’s data shows that 0.4% of Tweets sent in Japanese arrive at the 140 character limit, whereas 9% of those in English do.
Earlier this month it was reported that Twitter is testing tweetstrom feature that will let you publish series of tweets at one go. In March, Twitter stopped counting @replies from the 140-character limit. Last year in September, the company stopped counting photos, videos, quote tweets and polls from the 140-character limit. It was rumored that the micro-blogging site is considering 10,000 character limit for tweets. Twitter has already dropped the 140-character limit for Direct Messages.
Twitter has been struggling to increase the user base and user engagement on its platform for some time.