Twitter looks set to be changing the way it counts the 140 characters in your Tweets. In a report by the Verge, it looks like the micro-blogging site is going to stop counting things like your username, images, polls and GIFs which will give users more characters for actual content on their posts. While a firm date was not formally indicated by Twitter to the Verge, they are referencing two sources that the day all this starts is September 19th.
Beginning September 19th, the company will cut down on exactly which types of content count toward the platform’s 140-character limit. Media attachments (images, GIFs, videos, polls, etc.) and quoted tweets will no longer reduce the count.
If September 19th is the date or not, this is a fundamental change to how Twitter works and it could have big implications.
You could argue that the 140 character limit on Tweets is a fundamental characteristic of the service and shouldn’t be changed. However, in the competitive social networking world we live in,
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sometimes things have to change for the company to move forward. For Twitter, this could well be one of those moments. Keep in mind, you are still limited to 140 characters. You just don’t have certain things count against that character count. Think of things like pictures, GIFs, videos and the like as free characters. This gives you more space to actually put down some content. That’s not a bad thing and it will prevent the service from being a long form style place like Facebook or Google+.
There is no word if this change will require an app update for Android and iOS nor is it clear if it will be a mass roll out or phased in. More-than-likely, Twitter themselves will update their blog when they start making this change with all the details about what to expect.
