Twitter Changes The Rules After 10 Years
May 31, 2016
THE DAYS OF WORRYING ABOUT THE LENGTH OF A LINK FOR A TWEET ARE OVER.
Twitter has been my favourite social network to use for as long as I can remember. One of the biggest problems businesses face when tweeting is making sure their tweet is under 140 characters, and this was mostly down to the length of a URL. Twitter has listened and has implemented exactly what we have all been wanting for the last 6 years.
Whilst limited to 140 characters, we have learnt to express ourselves in such a small character limit but Twitter have evolved and this is something we can all be happy about (unlike the new Instagram branding).
Twitter said the following;
“So, you can already do a lot in a Tweet, but we want you to be able to do even more. In the coming months we’ll make changes to simplify Tweets including what counts toward your 140 characters, so for instance, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) will no longer “use up” valuable characters.”
Over the last 10 years, Twitter has evolved from a simple messaging platform to a building brick for a 21st century business, selling online. You can use Twitter to share photos, videos, hashtags, vines and more. Recently, Twitter has introduced the likes of polls, GIF’s and partnering up with Periscope to live broadcast through tweets.
WHAT WILL CHANGE?
Replies: When you are replying to a Twitter user, their @name will not count towards the 140-character limit.
Media Attachments: Adding photos, GIFs, videos, or polls to your tweets will no longer count towards the 140-character limit.
Retweeting & Quote Tweeting Yourself: Twitter are now enabling the RT button on your own tweets, so you can RT or quote tweet yourself.
RIP, “@”: The “@” symbol will be no more. You will be able to reach all of your followers without having to use the “@” symbol.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU?
You will now be able to have conversations on Twitter that are more straightforward, and you won’t have to cut out valuable words to ensure your link is a part of the 140-character limit. This means you will have more room for words.
Enabling the Retweet button on your own tweets means you can add a new opinion to your tweets, and get more conversations happening. We have all shared our opinion on Twitter that may have changed over time so now, we can retweet this, and add our new perspective.
Some of the above changes are already in play, but we may have to wait just a little bit longer to get our true 140-character limit.
Twitter have also said that they have “plans to help you get even more from your tweets”. They are exploring ways to make existing uses easier and enable new ones. Who knows what this means, but I’m sure we’ll find out very, very soon!
Are you happy with the “true” 140-character limit?
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