Twitter has plans to stop counting photos and links within the 140-character limit allowed for each tweet, reports Bloomberg. Removing photos and links from tweets will allow tweets with media to contain more text.
At the current time, photos take up 24 characters and links take up 23 characters, eliminating 47 available characters when both are included in a tweet. Twitter is reportedly introducing the change to give Twitter users "more flexibility" after exploring methods that would allow users to include more text in tweets.
Twitter has made efforts to give users additional characters to work with in the past, implementing tweet quoting features, using link shorteners, and removing character limits from Direct Messages.
Twitter has included a 140-character restriction since it launched in 2006, put in place to stay within the limits of the standard 160-character length of SMS messages with 20 characters left as space for a username. Reports in January suggested Twitter was considering eliminating the 140-character limit and allowing tweets to contain up to 10,000 characters as part of a project it called "Beyond 140," but Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey later said the character limit would not be changed.
Twitter is expected to implement the change in the next two weeks.
Top Rated Comments
I'd add that @ mentions should also be excluded from the 140 character count as well or at least be worth the same regardless of the legnth of the username.
I can only see this making Twitter better while increasing the sharing of links and media. It's rare that a social media site makes a positive change with no downside (IMO). I mostly follow people and websites for the links they post, not for status updates about their life. I use Twitter as a tool to learn new things and expand my perspective of the world. It's incredibly valuable and quick for me to use.
As for those who want massively increased Tweet lengths, that's not what Twitter is for. I like the approach that Tweetbot took in a recent update to sort of chain related Tweets together, for when that is needed (such as following an emerging news topic or for live tweeting a special event). But by keeping such a short length, it brings much needed brevity to social media. I wouldn't mind if they increased it slightly, say 160 or 180, but anything more just becomes too much noise.
Not sure if Twitter has noticed, but the cellular industry and mobile phone manufacturers have figured out how to group texts into conversations even if the text was sent in 3 different 140-count messages.
I prefer the short format of Twitter for quick readings and such. So I don't want to see long-form blog-like posts. But maybe extending to 240 characters would be nice. It's long enough to use proper English without really changing the basic concept of short messages.