Twitter announced Tuesday it would soon give users greater wiggle room in tweets by not counting name handles and media attachments in its longstanding 140-character limit.
The change comes as the San Francisco-based company finds itself under increasing pressure from shareholders to attract new users amid near-flat user growth.
"In the coming months we'll make changes to simplify Tweets, including what counts toward your 140 characters, so for instance, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) will no longer 'use up' valuable characters," the company said in a statement.
The 140-character limit has its roots in Twitter's original format, based on the 160-character limit for a mobile phone short message service (SMS). It was Twitter who made the 140-character message, with its SMS-style abbreviations, commonplace.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who took back the reigns of the company late last year, said in March the company would stick to the 140-character limit after media reports said it could be extended to as much as 10,000 characters.
The change comes as the San Francisco-based company finds itself under increasing pressure from shareholders to attract new users amid near-flat user growth.
"In the coming months we'll make changes to simplify Tweets, including what counts toward your 140 characters, so for instance, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) will no longer 'use up' valuable characters," the company said in a statement.
The 140-character limit has its roots in Twitter's original format, based on the 160-character limit for a mobile phone short message service (SMS). It was Twitter who made the 140-character message, with its SMS-style abbreviations, commonplace.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who took back the reigns of the company late last year, said in March the company would stick to the 140-character limit after media reports said it could be extended to as much as 10,000 characters.
