Twitter ups the ante with 280-character limit

Twitter users across the globe woke up to the news this morning that the social media platform is increasing its character count. Select users have been chosen to take part in the trial, although we expect it’ll be rolled out across the board in the not-too-distant future.

What are the changes?

The 140-character limit is no more, giving users a hefty 280 characters to express their views (or simply let the world know what they had for dinner).

And that’s about it.

What do we think?

As social media experts, we’ve got our own views on what this means for our clients, and brands in general.

It’s not uncommon for us to need to reduce the size of a tweet to fit the 140-character limit. With 280 to play with, we’ll have more scope for getting our clients’ messages across – and that can only be a good thing, right?

Then there’s the customer service side of things to consider. How many times have you been interacting with a brand on Twitter, only to find their reply broken down into multiple messages? Thanks to the changes, this should no longer be a problem.

Our Head of Social Hayley says: “It was only a matter of time before Twitter mixed up the length of its tweets. The new 280-character limit is really exciting as it will allow us to tell more of our clients’ story in a single post, while opening up opportunities to do it in new and interesting ways.

“As a team of content creators, it’s certainly a shock to the system. I wrote my first 280-character tweet earlier and it was odd still having characters left after reaching 140. It was quite satisfying being able to keep going and not having to re-write the tweet multiple times to fit it in.

“This new feature hasn’t been rolled out for our clients yet but we hope it will be soon – so watch this space!”

What are Twitter users saying?

As you’d expect, there has been plenty of chatter about the change on, well, Twitter. We can’t help but agree with some of these points from David Taylor!

And then of course there is this to consider. 

What do you think about the increased character limit? Let us know (in 140 or 280 characters) @Content_OD.