Twitter Eases its 140 Character Limit, Stops Counting “@usernames” in Replies

Rumor mills have been cranking up since the past year predicting that Twitter will do away with its 140 character limit. While that hasn’t actually happened, the microblogging site has definitely eased the character limit. Starting now, Twitter has announced that it will not count the @username for the character limit. This means that Twitter users can now make use of all the 140 characters all the time. Twitter had earlier decided on excluding photos and videos from the limit and now the same extends to the username (also @replies).

Believe me, counting the username has been one of the Achilles heels when it came to Twitter’s character count rules. Let’s say that I reply to a Tweet which has already tagged three other people, in this case, I would be left with only half the character-limit to actually put in my message, the rest will be counted against the username. With this update, Twitter will now be counting only the text you add against the limit.

The @usernames will be displayed above the message and users can still decide on whom they want to be the part of conversations. Also, when you reply to the tweet the mentions will be shown above and the “Replying to” option will allow you to choose the people in the conversation. The move is also expected to make the actual Tweets clutter free since they will be devoid of multiple usernames. The update is rolling out to both the web and official apps, and soon even the third party apps are expected to implement the same.

Twitter further claims that it had witnessed an increased level of engagement while it was testing the new platform. Although the new feature is already being rolled out chances are that it might take some time to appear.

from Technology Personalized