14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter, the social network known primarily for its cute bird logo and the 140-character limit is planning to ditch one of them, and the upcoming update is not aviary-related.
According to tech news site Re/code, people from inside the company are reporting that Twitter's management is thinking of simplifying the way the network works, and the first thing they see as a complication is the 140-character limit imposed on tweets.
The 140-character limit is one of the main elements of the Twitter brand
Many Twitter purists have objected to this move in the past, since the tweet limit had been one of Twitter's main defining elements, helping it stand out and differentiate itself from the plethora of social networks that were around when it first launched back in 2006.
The original 140-character limit was set up in the first place because the platform was heavily integrated with SMS messaging features, at least in its beginning. SMS messages have a similar limit of 140 characters.
Some industry experts also see the removal of the 140-character limit as a desperate effort to get more users on the platform, mainly because Twitter has been stagnating around the 300 million user mark for almost two years. Just this last July, the company reported it had 316 million monthly active users.
Twitter previously removed the 140-character limit for DMs
Such a move wouldn't be that far-fetched since in August Twitter did keep a promise it made in June, and removed the 140-character limit on private messages (also known as DMs). The new limit is now 10,000 characters.
If Twitter decides to remove the character limit for tweets, don't expect a similar limit of 10,000 characters.
In the past, rumors have surfaced that the company was planning to remove URLs and user handles from being counted as characters. If this last rumor materializes, a scenario like this could also happen, where the counter only worked for your custom text only, ignoring URLs, mentions, or hashtags.