Twitter won't be increasing its character limit on tweets
Twitter will turn 10 years old on Monday, March 21. While plenty has changed within the social media network, some things are going to stay the same. On NBC’s “Today” show today, March 18, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that the service’s hallmark 140-character message limit won’t be going away.
It’s staying. It’s a good constraint for us, and it allows for of the moment for everything.
- TodayRumors have abounded that Twitter was planning to eliminate the 140-character limit. In 2015, the social media outlet expanded the private Direct Messaging feature, increasing the length limit from 140 to 10,000 characters. Dorsey insists that change will not be coming to tweets, recent rumors notwithstanding.
Dorsey appeared on the “Today” show to mark the Twitter’s upcoming tenth anniversary. The CEO sent the service’s first tweet on March 21, 2006, and Twitter now boasts 320 million active users.
In other segments with “Today,” Dorsey spoke out against allegations that Twitter censors user content. In an interview with Matt Lauer, the executive responded to those claims, saying:
Absolutely not. Twitter has always been about controls. People can follow who they want, and it’s our job to make sure they see the most important things.”
I really want to see what people are saying and I want to hear from them.
- TodayWith that said, Dorsey acknowledged that tweets promoting violence are a violation of the company’s terms of service. A video made by the Islamic terrorist organization ISIS, for example, that singled out Dorsey as well as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for their stands against terrorism was taken “very seriously.”
I am glad to see the 140-character limit is here to stay for tweets. It’s definitely good to have more space to type in Direct Messages, but one of my favorite aspects of my Twitter timeline is that everything there is a bite-sized chunk. Sure, it can be limiting when you’re trying to pass along Web page addresses, but I still prefer not to have long-winded rants show up in my Twitter feed. Save that for Facebook.
