“Trying to cram your thoughts into a Tweet – we’ve all been there, and it’s a pain,” Aliza Rosen writes for Twitter’s official blog. “Interestingly, this isn’t a problem everywhere people Tweet. For example, when I (Aliza) Tweet in English, I quickly run into the 140 character limit and have to edit my Tweet down so it fits. Sometimes, I have to remove a word that conveys an important meaning or emotion, or I don’t send my Tweet at all. But when Iku Tweets in Japanese, he doesn’t have the same problem. He finishes sharing his thought and still has room to spare. This is because in languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese you can convey about double the amount of information in one character as you can in many other languages, like English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French.”
“We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, so we’re doing something new: we’re going to try out a longer limit, 280 characters, in languages impacted by cramming (which is all except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean),” Rosen writes. “Although this is only available to a small group right now, we want to be transparent about why we are excited to try this.”
“Our research shows us that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people Tweeting in English, but it is not for those Tweeting in Japanese. Also, in all markets, when people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people Tweeting – which is awesome!” Rosen writes. “Although we feel confident about our data and the positive impact this change will have, we want to try it out with a small group of people before we make a decision to launch to everyone.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Jack Dorsey, for one, is excited about the possibilities:
This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu
— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017
Others insinuate that a little editing goes a long way:
https://twitter.com/brianrbarone/status/912788388150960130
UPDATE, 9/27, 9:15am EDT: Here’s our first 280-character tweet:
Take Our Poll Sanford analyst Sacconaghi says, if iPhone X availability issues persist, some frustrated iPhone users could consider switching to other offerings
The only “other offerings” iPhone X customers would switch to are Apple’s A11 Bionic-powered iPhone 8/Plus.https://t.co/kHDuDHFNHN pic.twitter.com/dml5HQebgC
— MacDailyNews (@MacDailyNews) September 27, 2017