On Monday, Bloomberg reported that the platform will stop counting links and photos in tweets’ 140-character limit. Though the company declined to comment, the change could happen this month.
Currently, links (which Twitter automatically shortens), pictures and GIFs (which Twitter recently made searchable) take up to 24 characters.
Though it might not seem like much, the extra two dozen characters can go a long way toward helping users tell their stories—especially in a tweet that includes multimedia elements.
[WEBCAST: Get social media “next practices” from the big four platforms.]
TechCrunch reported:
Twitter has been encouraging users to include more media in their tweets with features like support for videos, gifs, and polls. What they really want, however, is space to write more. Users have resorted to tweetstorms (which won’t work as well and may become downright incomprehensible now that Twitter is moving from a chronological to algorithmic timeline) and screenshots of text.
Bloomberg reported that the change is a way to make Twitter more user-friendly:
It’s a step in a larger plan to give users more flexibility on the site. Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said in January that the company was looking for new ways to display text on Twitter, and would experiment based on how people use the service. For example, some people tweet screenshots of longer text in articles, or send many tweets one after the other to tell a story.
TechCrunch echoed the sentiment:
By giving users—even those that don’t use Twitter cards—more control over how they compose their tweets, Twitter may be able to lure more people onto the site—which is important because the company’s user growth has stagnated, while other social networks and messengers like Snapchat and WhatsApp continue to gain traction.
Twitter had considered dropping the 140-character limit and raising it to 10,000. However, the company quickly abandoned the idea after Twitter users responded with heavy criticism.
Twitter works on 2016 diversity goals
Its character limit isn’t the only thing Twitter is changing.
On Monday, the company announced that it had added the chief exec of Black Entertainment Television, Debra Lee, to its board of directors.
It also announced that board member Marjorie Scardino had been appointed Twitter’s lead independent director.
Facing scrutiny for its lack of diversity, Twitter—along with other tech companies—published diversity goals for 2016. Twitter’s diversity goals include the following objectives for its U.S. offices:
· Increase women overall to 35 percent
· Increase women in tech roles to 16 percent
· Increase women in leadership roles to 25 percent
· Increase underrepresented minorities overall to 11 percent*
· Increase underrepresented minorities in tech roles to 9 percent*
· Increase underrepresented minorities in leadership roles to 6 percent*
The appointments are steps toward making those goals a reality.
The company’s executive chairman, Omid Kordestani, welcomed Lee with a tweet:
Welcome @IamDebraLee, @BET chair and CEO, to the @twitter board!
— Omid Kordestani (@omidkordestani) May 16, 2016
Lee and Scardino also tweeted the announcements:
Thrilled to be joining the @twitter board. It’s transformed the media and the world like few other things in history (and continues to)!!
— Debra Lee (@IamDebraLee) May 16, 2016
Thrilled to start working w/@IamDebraLee on the @twitter board.
— Marjorie M Scardino (@marjscar) May 16, 2016
Also excited to serve as twitter’s lead independent director, tho’ my feet aren’t as big as Great @plscurrie’s!
— Marjorie M Scardino (@marjscar) May 16, 2016
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