By: Nick Gambino
Twitter has long been known as the social media platform with a 140 character limit. While annoying, it’s forced users to be more creative about their word choices making messages clearer and to the point. Just think of how irritating those 1000-word Facebook rants are.
While it’s definitely refreshing to read succinct tweets, it seemed a bit too strict when it came to sharing images, quotes, etc.
Twitter has finally tweaked that stiff rule. As of Monday images, videos, GIFs, polls, quoted tweets and @names will no longer be counted towards the 140 character limit.
Twitter announced this change in May of this year and we’ve been anxiously awaiting it. Jack Dorsey, CEO, told The Verge, “This is the most notable change we’ve made in recent times around conversation in particular, and around giving people the full expressiveness of the 140 characters. I’m excited to see even more dialog because of this.”
This is a welcome improvement for the social media platform as they struggle to remain relevant in a constantly evolving social media landscape.
Dorsey has acknowledged Twitter’s basic problems starting with the platform being confusing and alienating. The recent changes are a step in the right direction.
In another shining moment Twitter just streamed their first NFL game (New York Jets vs. the Buffalo Bills) as part of a recent deal. 2.1 million people tuned into the game on the tweeting app. That’s a pretty large slice of the viewership pie.
So I wouldn’t count the social media giant out just yet. Yes, they’re still a “giant” with somewhere around 310 million active users. Sure that’s not Facebook numbers but few are putting up Zuckerberg figures.
Now with cleaner and easier messages with less restrictions on the character cap we should see a boost in Twitter’s popularity. It seems like a simple formula: just give people less of a reason to hate you.
Let us know your thoughts on the improvement to Twitter in the comments below. Just make sure to write it in 140 characters or less.
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