Twitter to hike character limit from 140 to 10,000
12 Jun 2015
Twitter is clearly betting big on private messaging. The company announced in its developer blog, that it would scrap the 140-character limit on direct messaging and allow users to send direct messages that were 10,000 characters long.
However, that does not mean that users' tweets would support more than 140-characters. ''You may be wondering what this means for the public side of Twitter. Nothing! Tweets will continue to be the 140 characters they are today,'' the company wrote in a blog.
It would go without saying that given the fierce competition in the messaging space with the likes of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, the company surely knew instant messaging would be a big deal in the future.
However, the changes would not come until July and also Twitter had a number of recommendations to ensure that the apps and services could handle the longer messaging format.
The blog asks users to, review API additions, update their GET requests so they would be able to receive the full length of DM text and adjust your app UI to accommodate longer DM text.
Interestingly, the news comes on the same day as co-founder Dick Costolo decided to step down as the CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey, who served as CEO during Twitter's early years, would take the reins for the time till the San Francisco company looked for a permanent replacement.
According to commentators, the announcement showed Twitter was aware of how efficient its public display system was and how ridiculous its direct messages were for conversation.
One could ping a friend in a few quick phrases, but what if one was on the Twitter app and wanted to have a private conversation, the 140-character limit could be frustrating, which was the reason, messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Kik were the more popular options.
That could however all change now.
