We’ve all had at least one devastating Twitter moment when we had the most amazing tweet written out, only to see that we went over the 140-character limit. So, we sacrifice our good grammar and proper spelling in order to replace “your” with “ur,” “and” with “&,” and delete our super cute and relatable emojis. If we’re lucky, the tweet still makes sense after all the alterations and we can salvage our Twitter cred.
Luckily, the binding chains of the 140-character limit may be released soon. Rumors have been flying around since the beginning of the year, but no changes have been made so far. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey hinted at the idea of a character extension, but has yet to confirm the rumors.
— Jack (@jack) January 5, 2016
According to Refinery29, if a change was made, the company would likely just stop counting photos and links toward the 140-character limit. So, we won’t be able to write long-winded tweets, but that’s probably in our best interest anyway. Even with the 140-character limit, Tweeters everywhere have made long stories work by tweeting tons of shorter tweets. Anyone remember the Zola story?
Bloomberg reports that the limit was designed for users to be able to send tweets through SMS messaging (which have 160-character limits); the common way to tweet before smartphones became popular. Now that the use of SMS tweeting is, well, archaic, the company is more flexible about changes.
Twitter was created as an online space to send out quick and concise messages, so should it stay that way? Or are we ready to step our twitter game up beyond using “U” for “You?”
Blessed. Thank u
— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) March 31, 2016