NewsBite

Twitter moves to 280 characters in bid to combat lacklustre user growth

TWITTER boss Jack Dorsey has changed the key feature of the social media site, in a move that has bitterly divided users.

AP
2 min read
November 8, 2017 - 11:21AM
News Corp Australia Network
Twitter boss Jack Dorsey has introduced a new 280 limit on the microblogging site. Picture: Stuart McEvoy for The Australian.
Twitter boss Jack Dorsey has introduced a new 280 limit on the microblogging site. Picture: Stuart McEvoy for The Australian.

TWITTER has ended its iconic 140-character limit — and has given nearly everyone 280 characters.

Users tweeting in Chinese, Japanese and Korean will still have the original limit. That’s because writing in those languages uses fewer characters.

The company says nine per cent of tweets written in English hit the 140-character limit.

This causes people to spend more time editing their tweets or not sending them out at all.

Twitter hopes that the expanded limit will get more people tweeting more, helping its lacklustre user growth. The move came into effect at 9pm GMT, (8am AEDT) and has divided users.

Twitter has been testing the new limit for weeks. The company has been slowly easing restrictions to let people cram more characters into a tweet. It stopped counting polls, photos, videos and other things toward the limit.

RELATED: Eight times Trump has rocked Twitter

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is attempting to stimulate slow user growth. Picture: AFP
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is attempting to stimulate slow user growth. Picture: AFP

Some users have complained that the move is a sign that the microblogging site has lost its way and one of its chief attractions, its brevity.

However Twitter says that its experiment with the 280 character limit has shown that users will not abuse the new extended feature.

According to the company, those who have had access to the bigger limit only went past the 140 character limit five per cent of the time and only past 190 characters in two per cent of tweets.

The company also claimed users who had the new limit during tests received more likes and retweets.

Only two per cent of tweets used the full 280 character limit.

Twitter product manager Aliza Rosen said: “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, but that didn’t happen.”

“As a result, your timeline reading experience should not substantially change, you’ll still see about the same amount of tweets in your timeline.”

“In addition to more tweeting, people who had more room to tweet received more engagement, got more followers, and spent more time on Twitter.

“People in the experiment told us that a higher character limit made them feel more satisfied with how they expressed themselves on Twitter, their ability to find good content, and Twitter overall.”

Twitter’s 140 character limit was set when users were expected to send and read tweets via text message.

The texts ran to 160 characters, so Twitter set its limit at 140 to allow room for a username.

Originally published as Twitter moves to 280 characters in bid to combat lacklustre user growth

Add your comment to this story

To join the conversation, please Don't have an account? Register

Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout

Original URL: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/technology/twitter-moves-to-280-characters-in-bid-to-combat-lacklustre-user-growth/news-story/06307c74c7ba884c10d969af56e5d1e1