Twitter doubles their 140-character limit

It wasn't enough, the 140 limit. There had to be room for more. Not even the brevity that literally defines Twitter could contain the social media lust for something bigger, something better, something new ... something just ...MORE!

You see, Twitter had a "cramming" problem. Apparently users were having issues with cramming everything we wanted to say into the previous 140-character limit. It meant we had to be concise and plan ahead. It meant we had to edit tweets to make them fit.

According to Twitter...

Historically, 9% of Tweets in English hit the character limit. This reflects the challenge of fitting a thought into a Tweet, often resulting in lots of time spent editing and even at times abandoning Tweets before sending.

But now that the character limit has been expanded to 280, this problem has been "massively reduced" according to Twitter who goes on to say in their blog post, "that number dropped to only 1% of Tweets running up against the (new 280 character) limit."

Twitter notes there was a spike in character use that occurred immediately after the change. However "It was a temporary effect and didn’t last long" eventually settling down to only 5% of Tweets being longer than 140-characters, only 2% over 190.

So, now Twitter is making the new 280-character limit applicable to all languages where cramming was an issue. Twitter also notes that Japanese, Korean, and Chinese will continue to have 140-characters because cramming is not an issue in these languages due to the density of their writing systems.

For more insight, Twitter presents their stats here. ...