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The development, which has taken on a hashtag following of #beyond140, is a welcome change amongst users. Rumors had the full changes appearing on September the 19th, but these turned out to be just the removal of media such as images, gifs, and videos from the character count. This testing phase marks the full implementation of the changes, and according to TechCrunch has begun to affect sections of live users, with a full scale release coming up in the near future.
Say more about what's happening! Rolling out now: photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets no longer count toward your 140 characters. pic.twitter.com/I9pUC0NdZC— Twitter (@twitter) 19 September 2016
The earlier May announcement laid out the character limit changes Twitter were planning:
- Media attachments like gifs don't count. This came out on September 19th.
- @names don't count. The big part of this final update.
- .@ no longer necessary - tweets that begin with a username now go to everyone, instead of requiring the .@ prefix. Users will now have to retweet replies if they want them to be seen by everyone.
- You can retweet or quote yourself. I'm sure many Twitter users already find themselves infinitely quotable. Better retweet that low like post for the fifth time, no one saw it! No, it was just bad.
User reactions were generally positive to the changes last time, so we
expect the same this time. Some users did manage to poke fun at them,
though:
1st tweet using Twitter's new feature that doesn't count GIFs, photos, etc. against the 140-character limit!— Justice Don Willett (@JusticeWillett) 19 September 2016
Never again will I run out of pic.twitter.com/9Dx0kkwQAC
The changes are part of Twitter's ongoing struggles to revitalise the platform after shares have been tumbling following potential buyout collapses. Despite having 313m active monthly users in total, growth in them has been stagnant, and last year Twitter had to lay off 8% of its workforce. Twitter even shifted the release of their latest earnings to 4am PST rather than the usual 1pm, perhaps in a bid to sweep the dirt under the carpet.
There are some innovative ways around the Twitter character limit, but this move towards a slightly less restrictive means of communication without altering the overall tweet format
will likely be welcome amongst users. It reflects a willingness by
Twitter to adapt to user expectations, in terms of ease of media sharing
and convenience of communication with others, that is something Twitter
needs right now. Time will tell how drastic this change feels, and
whether it will be a significant one. In any case, with Twitter's iconic
@usernames almost disappearing, we're definitely @ the end of an era.
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