Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, is about to break his own rule and extend the character limit for tweets. If all goes well after preliminary tests, tweets could extend their length to 280 characters #mobilemagic
This Tuesday, the company announced that it was testing their theory that longer tweets are the key to retain current users and attract new ones. A small group of 328 million users would test tweeting in 280 characters (double the length of a classic tweet) in several languages, including English, Spanish and French.
At the moment, the idea of communicating in more characters to achieve a higher engagement rate is just a theory. After all, most users who are frustrated by the character limit tweet in English, as this blog post claims. Those who write in Japanese, Chinese or Korean don’t encounter the same difficulties, in fact they’re more than okay with the restrictions of the social media platform.
Eleven years ago, when the company went live, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, didn’t have a significant reason to opt for 140 character/tweet, but he was inspired by the SMS limit in those days (160). Now, the defining feature of the social media channel might fade away, especially since Tweeters are less and less patient to create meaningful messages that are also short. In fact, sending a tweet as part of a longer conversation has been a popular practice for some time now.
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