Hello, 280: Twitter doubles character count on tweets

Our commander-in-chief is going to have a lot more room to tweet.

Twitter announced Tuesday that it will roll out a 280-character limit for single tweets after testing the option among a handful of users since September.

The new limit applies to languages where cramming is an issue, such as English. The change won’t apply to Chinese, Japanese or Korean languages because the density of those languages’ writing allows users to say more with fewer characters.

The move will give President Donald Trump, Twitter’s highest profile user, more room to discuss potential policies and take aim at critics — a habit that has given him a direct megaphone to voters and helped him regularly lay claim to the news cycle, but which has dismayed some of his own constituents.

San Francisco-based Twitter says the move is designed to remove the frustration of shoe-horning thoughts into 140-characters, a limitation that makes for awkward grammar and creative spelling.

When Twitter rolled out the larger character limit, it noticed a drop in the number of tweets running against the maximum count, said Twitter product manager Aliza Rosen.

“We believe people spent less time editing their tweets in the composer,” said Rosen. “This shows that more space makes it easier for people to fit thoughts in a tweet, so they could say what they want to say, and send tweets faster than before.”

Easier for tweeters — but perhaps more onerous for the tweets’ readers. When Twitter revealed it was testing out a larger character limit in September, many users grew concerned their feeds would clog with much longer tweets.

“And in one stroke, Twitter doubles the complexity of our nation’s foreign policy,” joked late night host Stephen Colbert.

Trump continues to use Twitter as his primary platform, a trend he started well before he entered the presidential election. He was not part of the 280character test.

The USA TODAY Trump Voter Panel, a focus group of 25 Trump voters from around the country, agreed the president’s tweeting is a big reason for his troubles in the first months of his administration.

All may not be lost, for those wary of longer political rants and nostalgic for the pithy missives that made the platform beloved by comedians, both professional and self-appointed.

Rosen said during the testing period, only 5% of tweets topped the 140-character limit, and only 2% went beyond 190 characters.

“We — and many of you — were concerned that timelines may fill up with 280 character Tweets, and people with the new limit would always use up the whole space,” said Rosen. “But that didn’t happen.”

Twitter users also expressed concerns the higher count goes against the spirit of the service and its 140-character concept, a somewhat arbitrary choice based on the 160 character limit on pre-smartphone SMS text messaging.

Users have already employed clever tactics to stretch beyond 140 characters, such as screenshots of longer messages or tweet-storms, a series of connected tweets.

Ultimately, Twitter hopes its decision could lead to users growing more engaged with the service. Rosen said users with the longer character count earned more likes, retweets, and mentions, along with more followers.

For its last quarter, Twitter reported 330 million monthly active users, up 4% from the same time last year. Frustration with sluggish user growth and sales, particularly in contrast to the rapid expansion of Facebook and Instagram, has battered shares, pressuring CEO Jack Dorsey.

Shares slipped after hours. They closed up 1.4% at $19.66, well off an all-time high of more than $70 but up 20% for the year.