Many real estate pros use Twitter to keep in touch with their clients, and those who find the 140-character limit too restrictive may be getting a reprieve soon. The social network is now testing doubling the character limit of posts from 140 to 280 in select markets. Twitter execs say the goal is to eliminate the constraints that have kept users from tweeting more frequently.
“When people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people tweeting,” Twitter said in a blog post announcing the longer-tweet test.
Twitter, now 11 years old with 328 million users, has been wrestling with how to change the social media service to attract more users, all while being careful not to alienate existing users who may have developed a fondness for the 140-character limit. Twitter allowed an extension of sorts in its character count last year by allowing users to post photos and GIFs without having those count against their overall character limit. When they suggested they might extend the overall limit beyond 140 characters, die-hard fans criticized the move, which prompted Twitter’s chief executive Jack Dorsey to announce the limit was to stay in place.
Similarly, this 280-character test is already seeing some backlash. “We understand since many of you have been tweeting for years, there may be an emotional attachment to 140 characters,” Twitter said in a statement. “But we tried this, saw the power of what it will do, and fell in love with this new, still brief, constraint.”
The test will begin in randomly selected small groups around the world, The New York Times reports. The firm will then decide whether to roll out the longer tweets to wider groups for further testing or to all Twitter users at once.
Source: “Twitter to Test Doubling Tweet Length to 280 Characters,” The New York Times (Sept. 26, 2017)
