Twitter takes photos, videos, GIFs out of tweet limit
TWITTER has announced that media extras such as photos, GIFs and videos, along with quoted tweets and user polls, will no longer “use up” the 140-character limit for each tweet.
Excluded from the update on Monday was the removal of counting user names in a reply or mention towards the 140-character limit, although this had been announced in a blog entry in May.
A Twitter spokeswoman said the company was testing this feature and would be introducing it to a small group of users in the coming weeks before rolling it out to everyone. She did not give a date for the update.
In its May blog entry, Twitter said the new features would help users “do even more” with their tweets.
“We’re exploring ways to make existing uses easier and enable new ones, all without compromising the unique brevity and speed that make Twitter the best place for live commentary, connections, and conversations,” the blog post says.
One of the updates outlined is removing the space-taking user names in replies and mentions.
In a demonstration video showing how the replies function is to look, “@username” is replaced with a thread line that shows different tweets in a conversation.
The names of users involved in the conversation are displayed above the tweet after the text “replying to”.
Another feature mentioned in the May blog post that was missing from Monday’s roll-out was the update that would make all replies appear on a user’s feed, making it unnecessary to use “@” when trying to display replies to a user’s audience.
Twitter did not confirm if this feature was being tested or when users could expect to see it being introduced.
The product change comes during a rocky period for a company that has had declining revenue growth and stock value for some time. Twitter reported that the last quarter saw the slowest revenue growth for the company since it went public in 2013.
The platform has struggled to expand its user base and drive up engagement beyond its core group of devoted users, which in turn affects advertising interest.
Twitter chief executive and co-founder Jack Dorsey has cited streamlining the site’s user experience, such as excluding mentions and links in a tweet’s character limit, as one part in an effort to attract new users.
Rita Gunther McGrath, a professor at Columbia Business School who focuses on business strategy, says the relaxation of character limits could be a way of encouraging users to post more images and videos, which some research had shown captured more users for longer.
“They want their content to be more engaging,” she said. “If you can’t keep people on the site and sharing to the site, where are advertisers’ dollars going?” – The Washington Post